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A SERIES OF ENGLISH SKETCHES. 



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NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 




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BOSTON: 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 



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Copyright, 1863. 
BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 



CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED AT TIIE RIVERSIDE PRESS. 







FRANKLIN PIERCE, 

AS A SLIGHT MEMORIAL OF A COLLEGE FRIENDSHIP, PROLONGED 

THROUGH MANHOOD, AND RETAINING ALL ITS VITALITY 

IN OUR AUTUMNAL YEARS, 

STIjis Fohtnte 

IS INSCRIBED BY 

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 



TO A FRIEND. 




HAVE not asked your consent, my dear Gen- 
eral, to the foregoing inscription, because it 
would Lave been no inconsiderable disappoint- 
ment to me had you withheld it ; for I have long desired 
to connect your name with some book of mine, in com- 
memoration of an early friendship that has grown old 
between two individuals of widely dissimilar pursuits and 
fortunes. I only wish that the offering were a worthier 
one than this volume of sketches, which certainly are not 
of a kind likely to prove interesting to a statesman in 
retirement, inasmuch as they meddle with no matters of 
policy or government, and have very little to say about 
the deeper traits of national character. In their hum- 
ble way, they belong entirely to aesthetic literature, and 
can achieve no higher success than to represent to the 
American reader a few of the external aspects of English 
scenery and life, especially those that are touched with 
the antique charm to which our countrymen are more 
susceptible than are the people among whom it is of 
native growth. 

I once hoped, indeed, that so slight a volume would 



Vlll TO A FRIEND. 

not be all that I might write. These and other sketches, 
with which, in a somewhat rougher form than I have 
given them here, my journal was copiously filled, were 
intended for the side-scenes and backgrounds and exte- 
rior adornment of a work of fiction of which the plan had 
imperfectly developed itself in my mind, and into which 
I ambitiously proposed to convey more of various modes 
of truth than I could have grasped by a direct effort. 
Of course, I should not mention this abortive project, 
only that it has been utterly thrown aside and will never 
now be accomplished. The Present, the Immediate, the 
Actual, has proved too potent for me. It takes away not 
only my scanty faculty, but even my desire for imagina- 
tive composition, and leaves me sadly content to scatter 
a thousand peaceful fantasies upon the hurricane that is 
sweeping us all along with it, possibly, into a Limbo 
where our nation and its polity may be as literally the 
fragments of a shattered dream as my unwritten Ro- 
mance. But I have far better hopes for our dear coun- 
try; and for my individual share of the catastrophe, I 
aClict myself little, or not at all, and shall easily find 
room for the abortive work on a certain ideal shelf, 
w r here are reposited many other shadowy volumes of 
mine, more in number, and very much superior in 
quality, to those which I have succeeded in rendering 
actual. 

To return to these poor Sketches ; some of my friends 
have told me that they evince an asperity of sentiment 
towards the English people which I ought not to feel, 
and which it is highly inexpedient to express. The. 
charge surprises me, because, if it be true, I have writ- 



TO A FRIEND. IX 

fen from a shallower mood than I supposed. I seldom 
came into personal relations with an Englishman with- 
out beginning to like him, and feeling my favorable im- 
pression wax stronger with the progress of the acquaint- 
ance. I never stood in an English crowd" without being 
conscious of hereditary sympathies. Nevertheless, it is 
undeniable that an American is continually thrown upon 
his national antagonism by some acrid quality in Hie 
moral atmosphere of England. These people think so 
loftily of themselves, and so contemptuously of every- 
body else, that it requires more generosity than I pos- 
sess to keep always in perfectly good-humor with them. 
Jotting down the little acrimonies of the moment in my 
journal, and transferring them thence (when they hap- 
pened to be tolerably well expressed) to these pages, it 
is very possible that I may have said things which a 
profound observer of national character would hesitate 
to sanction, though never any, I verily believe, that had 
not more or less of truth. If they be true, there is no 
reason in the world why they should not be said. Not 
an Englishman of them all ever spared America for cour- 
tesy's sake or kindness ; nor, in my opinion, would it 
contribute in the least to our mutual advantage and 
comfort if we were to besmear one another all over with 
butter and honey. At any rate, we must not judge of 
an Englishman's susceptibilities by our own, which, like- 
wise, I trust, are of a far less sensitive texture than 
formerly. 

And now farewell, my dear friend ; and excuse (if you 
think it needs any excuse.) the freedom with which I thus 
publicly assert a personal friendship between a private 



X TO A FRIEND. 

individual and a statesman who has filled what was then 
the most august position in the world. But I dedicate 
my book to the Friend, and shall defer a colloquy with 
the Statesman till some calmer and sunnier hour. Only 
this let me say, that, with the record of your life in 
my memory, and with a sense of your character in 
my deeper consciousness as among- the few things that 
time has left as it found them, I need no assurance that 
you continue faithful forever to that grand idea of an 
irrevocable Union, which, as you once told me, was the 
earliest that your brave father taught yon. Tor other 
men there may be a choice of paths, — for you, but one; 
and it rests among. my certainties that no man's loyalty 
is more steadfast, no man's hopes or apprehensions on 
behalf of our national existence more deeply heartfelt, 
or more closely intertwined with his possibilities of per- 
sonal happiness, than those of Franklin Pierce. 

The Wayside, July 2, 1863. 




CONTENTS. 



♦— 

Page 

Consular Experiences 13 

Leamington Spa 51 

About Warwick 77 

Recollections of a Gifted Woman . . . 104 

Lichfield and Uttoxeter 137 

Pilgrimage to Old Boston . . . . 158 

Near Oxford 188 

Some of the Haunts of Burns .... 216 

A London Suburb 238 

Up the Thames 270 

Outside Glimpses of English Poverty . . 306 

Civic Banquets 342 



OUR OLD HOME, 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 




HE Consulate of tlie United States, in my day, 
was located in Washington Buildings (a shabby 
and smoke-stained edifice of four stories high, 
thus illustriously named in honor of our national estab- 
lishment), at the lower corner of Brunswick Street, con- 
tiguous to the Goree Arcade, and in the neighborhood of 
some of the oldest docks. This w r as by no means a polite 
or elegant portion of England's great commercial city, 
nor were the apartments of the American official so 
splendid as to indicate the assumption of much consular 
pomp on his part. A narrow and ill-lighted staircase 
gave access to an equally narrow and ill-lighted passage- 
way on the first floor, at the extremity of which, sur- 
mounting a door-frame, appeared an exceedingly stiff 
pictorial representation of the Goose and Gridiron, ac- 
cording to the English idea of those ever-to-be-hon- 
ored symbols. " The staircase and passageway were often 
thronged, of a morning, with a set of beggarly and 
piratical-looking scoundrels (I do no wrong to our own 



14 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

countrymen in styling them so, for not one in twenty was 
a genuine American), purporting to belong to our mer- 
cantile marine, and chiefly composed of Liverpool Black- 
balled and the scum of e^very maritime nation on earth ; 
such being the seamen by whose assistance we then dis- 
puted the navigation of the world with England. These 
specimens of a most unfortunate ckiss of people were 
shipwrecked crews in quest of bed, board, and clothing, 
invalids asking permits for the hospital, bruised and 
bloody wretches complaining of ill-treatment by their 
officers, drunkards, desperadoes, vagabonds, and cheats, 
perplexiugly intermingled with an uncertain proportion 
of reasonably honest men. All of them (save here and 
there a poor devil of a kidnapped landsman in his shore- 
going rags) wore red flannel shirts, in which they had 
sweltered or shivered throughout the voyage, and all 
required consular assistance in one form or another. 

Any respectable visitor, if he could make up his mind 
to elbow a passage among these sea-monsters, was admit- 
ted into an outer office, where he found more of the same 
species, explaining their respective wants or grievances 
to the Vice-Consul and clerks, while their shipmates 
awaited their turn outside the door. Passing through 
this exterior court, the stranger was ushered into an 
inner privacy, where sat the Consul himself, ready to 
give personal attention to such peculiarly difficult and 
more important cases as might demand the exercise of 
(what we will courteously suppose to be) his own higher 
judicial or administrative sagacity. 

It was an apartment of very moderate size, painted in 
imitation of oak, and duskily lighted by^ two windows 
looking across a by-street at the rough brick-side of an 
immense cotton warehouse, a plainer and uglier structure 
than ever was built in America. On the walls of the 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 15 

room hung a large map of the United States (as they 
were, twenty years ago, but seem little likely to be, 
twenty years hence), and a similar one of Great Britain, 
with its territory so provokingly compact, that we may 
expect it to sink sooner than sunder. Farther adorn- 
ments were some rude engravings of our naval victories 
in the War of 1812, together with the Tennessee State 
House, and a Hudson River steamer, and a colored, 
life-size lithograph of General Taylor, with an honest liid- 
eousness of aspect, occupying the place of honor above 
the mantel-piece. On the top of a bookcase stood a fir ice 
and terrible bust of General Jackson, pilloried in a mil- 
itary collar which rose above his ears, and frowning forth 
immitigably at any Englishman who might happen to 
cross the threshold. I am afraid, however, that the 
truculence of the old General's expression was utterly 
thrown away on this stolid and obdurate race of men ; 
for, when they occasionally inquired whom this work of 
art represented, I w T as mortified to find that the younger 
ones had never heard of the battle of New Orleans, and 
that their elders had either forgotten it altogether, or 
contrived to misremember, and twist it wrong end fore- 
most into something like an English victory. They have 
caught from the old Romans (whom they resemble in so 
many other characteristics) this excellent method of keep- 
ing the national glory intact by sweeping all defeats and 
humiliations clean out of their memory. Nevertheless, 
my patriotism forbade me to take down either the bust 
or the pictures, both because it seemed no more than 
right that an American Consulate (being a little patch of 
our nationality imbedded into the soil and institutions 
of England) should fairly represent the American taste in 
the fine arts, and because these decorations reminded me 
so delightfully of an old-fashioned American barber's shop. 



16 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

One truly English object was a barometer hanging on 
the wall, generally indicating one or another degree of 
disagreeable weather, and so seldom pointing to Pair, 
that I began to consider that portion of its circle as 
made superfluously. The deep chimney, with its grate 
of bituminous coal, was English too, as was also the 
chill temperature that sometimes called for a fire at 
midsummer, and the foggy or smoky atmosphere which 
often, between November and March, compelled me to 
set the gas aflame at noonday. I am not aware of omit- 
ting anything important in the above descriptive inven- 
tory, unless it be some book-shelves filled with octavo 
volumes of the American Statutes, and a good many 
pigeon-holes stuffed with dusty communications from 
former Secretaries of State, and other official documents 
of similar value, constituting part of the archives of the 
Consulate, which I might have done my successor a 
favor by flinging into the coal-grate. Yes ; there was 
one other article demanding prominent notice : the con- 
sular copy of the Now Testament, bound in black mo- 
rocco, and greasy, I fear, with a daily succession of per- 
jured kisses ; at least, I can hardly hope that all the 
ten thousand oaths, administered by me between two 
breaths, to all sorts of people and on all manner of 
worldly business, were reckoned by the swearer as if 
taken at his soul's peril. 

Such, in short, was the dusky and stifled chamber in 
which I spent wearily a considerable portion of more 
than four good years of my existence. At first, to be 
quite frank with the reader, I looked upon it as not alto- 
gether fit to be tenanted by the commercial representa- 
tive of so great and prosperous a country as the United 
States then were ; and I should speedily have transferred 
my headquarters to airier and loftier apartments, except 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 17 

for the prudent consideration that my government would 
have left me thus to support its dignity at my own per- 
sonal expense. Besides, a long line of distinguished 
predecessors, of whom the latest is now a gallant general 
under the Union banner, had found the locality good 
enough for them; it might certainly be tolerated, there- 
fore, by an individual so little ambitious of external mag- 
nificence as myself. So 1 settled quietly down, striking 
some of my roots into suc]i sod as 1 could find, adapting 
myself to circumstances, and with so much success, that, 
though from first to last 1 hated the very sight of the 
little room, I should yet have felt a singular kind of re- 
luctance in changing it for a better. 

Hither, in the course of my incumbency, came a great 
variety of visitors, principally Americans, but including 
almost every other nationality on earth, especially the 
distressed and downfallcn ones like those of Poland and 
Hungary. Italian bandits (for so they looked), pro- 
scribed conspirators from Old Spain, Spanish -Americans, 
Cubans who professed to have stood by Lopez and nar- 
rowly escaped his fate, scarred French soldiers of the 
Second Republic, — in a word, all sufferers, or pretended 
ones, in the cause of Liberty, all people homeless in the 
widest sense, those who never had a country or had lost 
it, those whom their native land had impatiently flung oil 
for planning abetter system of things than they were born 
to, — a multitude of these and, doubtless, an equal num- 
ber of jail-bi,rds, outwardly of the same feather, sought 
the American Consulate, in hopes of at least a bit of 
bread, and, perhaps, to beg a passage to the blessed 
shores of Freedom. In most cases Ihere was nothing, 
and in any case distressingly little, to be done for them ; 
neither was I of a proselyting disposition, nor desired to 
make my Consulate a nucleus for the vagrant discontents 

E 



18 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

of other lands. And yet it was a proud thought, a forci- 
ble appeal to the sympathies of an American, that these 
unfortunates claimed the privileges of citizenship in our 
Republic on the strength of the very same noble misde- 
meanors that had rendered them outlaws to their native 
despotisms. So I gave them what small help I could. 
Methinks the true patriots and martyr-spirits of the whole 
world should have been conscious of a paug near the heart, 
when a deadly blow was aimed* at the vitality of a country 
which they have felt to be their own in the last resort. 

As for my countrymen, I grew better acquainted with 
many of our national characteristics during those four 
years than in all my preceding life. Whether brought 
more strikingly out by the contrast with English man- 
ners, or that my Yankee friends assumed an extra pecul- 
iarity from a sense of defiant patriotism, so it was that 
their tones, sentiments, and behavior, even their figures 
and cast of countenance, all seemed chiselled in sharper 
angles than ever I had imagined them to be at home. 
It impressed me with an odd idea of having somehow 
lost the property of my own person, when I occasionally 
heard one of them speaking of me as " my Consul " ! 
They often came to the Consulate in parties of half a 
dozen or more, on no business whatever, but merely to 
subject their public servant to a rigid examination, and 
see how he was getting on with his duties.- These inter- 
views were rather formidable, being characterized by a 
certain stiffness which I felt to be sufficiently irksome 
at the moment, though it looks laughable enough in the 
retrospect, It is my firm belief that these fellow-citi- 
zens, possessing a native tendency to organization, gen- 
erally halted outside of the door to elect a speaker, 
chairman, or moderator, and thus approached me with 
all the formalities of a deputation from the American 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 19 

people. After salutations on both sides, — abrupt, 
awful, and severe on their part, and deprecatory on 
mine, — and the national ceremony of shaking hands 
being duly gone through with, the interview proceeded 
by a series of calm and well-considered questions or 
remarks from the spokesman (no other of the guests 
vouchsafing to utter' a word), and diplomatic responses 
from the Consul, who sometimes found the investiga- 
tion a little more searching than he liked. I flatter 
myself, however, that, by much practice, I attained 
considerable skill in this kind of intercourse, the art of 
which lies in passing off commonplaces for new and valu- 
able truths, and talking trash and emptiness in such a 
way that a pretty acute auditor might mistake it for 
something solid. If there be any better method of deal- 
ing with such junctures, — when talk is to be created 
out of nothing, and within the scope of several minds at 
once, so that you cannot apply yourself to your interlocu- 
tor's individuality, — I have not learned it. 

Sitting, as it were, in the gateway between the Old 
World and the New, where the steamers and packets 
landed the greater part of our wandering countrymen, 
and received them again when their wanderings were 
done, I saw that no people on earth have such vagabond 
habits as ourselves. The Continental races never travel 
at all if they can help it ; nor does an Englishman ever 
think of stirring abroad, unless he has the money to spare, 
or proposes to himself some definite advantage from the 
journey ; but it seemed to me that nothing was more 
common than for a young American deliberately to spend 
all his resources in an a-sthetie peregrination about Eu- 
rope, returning with pockets nearly empty to begin the 
world in earnest. It happened, indeed, much oftener 
than was at all agreeable to myself, that their funds held 



20 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

out just long enough to bring tlicm to the door of my 
Consulate, where they entered as if with an undeniable 
right to its shelter and protection, and required at my 
hands to be sent home again. In my first simplicity, — 
finding them gentlemanly in maimers, passably educated, 
and only tempted a little beyond their moans by a laud- 
able desire of improving and refining themselves, or, 
perhaps for the sake o( getiing better artistic instruction 
in music, painting, or sculpture than our country could 
supply, — I sometimes took charge of them on my pri- 
vate responsibility, since our government gives itself no 
trouble about its stray children, except the seafaring 
cla^s. But. after a few such experiments, discovering 
that none of these estimable and ingenuous young men, 
however trustworthy they might, appear, ever dreamed 
of reimbursing the Consul, I deemed it expedient to take 
another course with them. Applying myself to some 
friendly shipmaster, I engaged homeward passages on 
their behalf, with the understanding that they were to 
make themselves serviceable on shipboard; and I re- 
member several very pathetic appeals from painters and 
musicians, touching the damage which their artistic lin- 
gers were likely to incur from handling the ropes. But 
my observation of so many heavier troubles left me very 
little tenderness for their tinger-ends. In time I grew 
to be reasonably hard-hearted, though it never was quite 
possible to leave a countryman with no shelter save an 
E gl sh poorhouse, when, as he invariably averred, he 
had only to set foot on his native soil to be possessed of 
ample funds. It was my ultimate conclusion, however, 
that American ingenuity may be pretty safely left to 
itself, and that, one way or another, a Yankee vagaboud 
is certain to turn up at his own threshold, if he has any, 
without help of a Consul, and perhaps be taught a lessou 
of foresight that may profit him hereafter. 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 21 

Among these stray Americans, I met with no other 
case so remarkable as that of an old man, who was in the 
habit of visiting me once in a few months, and soberly 
affirmed that he had been wandering about England 
more than a quarter of a century (precisely twenty-seven 
years, I think), and all the while doing his utmost to get 
home again. Herman Melville, in his excellent novel or 
biography of " Israel Potter," has an idea somewhat 
similar to this. The individual now in question was a 
mild and patient, but very ragged and pitiable old fellow, 
shabby beyond description, lean and hungry-looking, but 
with a large and somewhat red nose. He made no com- 
plaint of his ill-fortune, but only repeated in a quiet voice, 
with a pathos of which he w T as himself evidently uncon- 
scious, " I want to get home to Ninety-second Street, 
Philadelphia." He described himself as a printer by 
trade, and said that he had come over when he was a 
younger man, in the hope of bettering himself, and for 
the sake of seeing the Old Country, but had never since 
been rich enough to pay his homeward passage. His 
manner and accent did not quite convince 'me that he 
was an American, and I told him so ; but he steadfastly 
affirmed, " Sir, I was born and have lived in Ninety- 
second Street, Philadelphia," and then went on to de- 
scribe some public edifices and other local objects with 
which he used to be familiar, adding, with a simplicity 
that touched me very closely, " Sir, I had rather be there 
than here ! " Though I still manifested a lingering 
doubt, he took no offence, replying with the same mild 
depression as at first, and insisting again and again on 
Ninety-second Street. Up to the time when I saw him, 
he still got a little occasional job-w T ork at his trade, but 
subsisted mainly on such charity as he met with in his 
wanderings, shifting from place to place continually, and 



22 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

asking assistance to convey him to his native land. Pos- 
sibly he was an impostor, one of the multitudinous 
shapes of English vagabondism, and told his falsehood 
with such powerful simplicity, because, by many repeti- 
tions, he had convinced himself of its truth. But if, as 
I believe, the tale was fact, how very strange and sad 
was this old man's fate ! Homeless on a foreign shore, 
looking always towards his country, coming again and 
again to the point whence so many were setting sail for 
it, — so many who would soon tread in Ninety-second 
Street, — losing, in this long series of years, some of the 
distinctive characteristics of an American, and at last 
dying and surrendering his clay to be a portion of the 
soil whence he could not escape in his lifetime. 

He appeared to see that he had moved me, but did not 
attempt to press his advantage with any new argument, 
or any varied form of entreaty. Pie had but scanty and 
scattered thoughts in his gray head, and in the intervals 
of those, like the refrain of an old ballad, came in the 
monotonous burden of his appeal, " If I could only find 
myself in Ninety-second Street, Philadelphia ! " But 
even his desire of getting home had ceased to be an 
ardent one (if, indeed, it had not always partaken of the 
dreamy sluggishness of his character), although it re- 
mained his only locomotive impulse, and perhaps the sole 
principle of life that kept his blood from actual torpor. 

The poor old fellow's story seemed to me almost as 
worthy of being chanted in immortal song as that of 
Odysseus or Evangeline. I took his case into deep con- 
sideration, but dared not incur the moral responsibility 
of sending him across the sea, at his age, after so many 
years of exile, when the very tradition of him had passed 
away, to find his friends dead, or forgetful, or irretriev- 
ably vanished, and the whole country become more truly 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 23 

b foreign laud to him than England was now, — and even 
Ninety-second Street, in the weedlike decay and growth 
of our localities, made over anew and grown unrecogniz- 
able by his old eyes. That street, so patiently longed 
for, had transferred itself to the New Jerusalem, and lie 
must seek it there, contenting his slow heart, mean- 
while, with the smoke begrimed thoroughfares of English 
towns, or the green country lanes and by-paths with which 
his wanderings had made him familiar ; for doubtless he 
had a beaten track and was the " long-remembered beg- 
gar " now, with food and a roughly hospitable greeting 
ready for him at many a farm-house door, and his choice 
of lodging under a score of haystacks. In America, noth- 
ing awaited him but that worst form of disappointment 
which comes under the guise of a long-cherished and late- 
accomplishcd purpose, and then a year or two of dry and 
barren sojourn in an almshouse, and death among stran- 
gers at last, where he had imagined a circle of familiar 
faces. So I contented myself with giving him alms, 
which he thankfully accepted, and went away with bent 
shoulders and an aspect of gentle forlornness ; returning 
upon his orbit, however, after a few months, to tell the 
same sad and quiet story of his abode in England for 
more than twenty-seven years, in all which time he had 
been endeavoring, and still endeavored as patiently as 
ever, to find his way home to Ninety-second Street, Phil- 
adelphia. 

I recollect another case, of a more ridiculous order, 
but still with a foolish kind of pathos entangled in it, 
which impresses me now more forcibly than it did at the 
moment. One day, a queer, stupid, good-natured, fat- 
faced individual came into my private room, dressed in 
a sky-blue, cut-away coat and mixed trousers, both gar- 
ments worn and shabby, and rather too small for his 



24 CONSULAR, EXPERIENCES. 

overgrown bulk. After a little preliminary talk, he 
turned out to be a country shopkeeper (from Connecti- 
cut, I think), who had left a flourishing business, and 
come over to England purposely and solely to have an 
interview with the Queen. Some years before lie had 
named his two children, one for her Majesty and the 
other for Prince Albert, and had transmitted photographs 
of the little people, as well as of his wife and himself, to 
the illustrious godmother. The Queen had gratefully 
acknowledged the favor in a letter under the hand of 
her private secretary. Now, the shopkeeper, like a great 
many other Americans, had long cherished a fantastic 
notion th it he was one of the rightful heirs or a rich 
Euglish estate; and on the strength of her Majesty's 
letter and the hopes of royal patronage which it inspired, 
he had shut up his little country-store and come over to 
claim his inheritance. On the voyage, a German fellow- 
passenger had relieved him of his money on pretence of 
getting it favorably exchanged, and had disappeared im- 
mediately on the ship's arrival ; so that the poor fellow 
was compelled to pawn all his clothes, except the remark- 
ably shabby ones in which I beheld him, and in which 
(as he himself hinted, with a melancholy, yet good- 
natured smile) he did not look altogether lit to see the 
Queen. I agreed with him that the bobtailed coat and 
mixed trousers constituted a very odd-looking court-dress, 
and suggested that it was doubtless his present purpose 
to get back to Connecticut as fast as possible. But no ! 
The resolve to see the Queen was as strong in him as 
ever; and it was marvellous the pertinacity with which 
he clung to it amid raggedness and starvation, and the 
earnestness of his supplication that I would supply him 
with funds for a suitable appearance at Windsor Castle. 
I never had so satisfactory a perception of a complete 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 25 

booby before in my life ; and it caused me to feel kindly 
towards him, and yet impatient and exasperated on be- 
half of common-sense, which could not possibly tolerate 
that such an unimaginable donkey should exist. I laid 
his absurdity before him in the very plainest terms, but 
without either exciting his anger or shaking his resolu- 
tion. "0 my dear man," quoth he, with good-natured, 
placid, simple, and tearful stubbornness, "if you could 
but enter into my feelings and see the matter from be- 
ginning to end as I see it!" To confess the truth, I 
have since felt that I was hard-hearted to the poor sim- 
pleton, and that there was more weight in his remon- 
strance than I chose to be sensible of, at the time; for, 
like many men who have been in the habit of making 
playthings or tools of their imagination and sensibility, 
1 was too rigidly tenacious of what was reasonable in 
the affairs of real life. And even absurdity has its rights, 
when, as in this case, it has absorbed a human being's 
entire nature and purposes. I ought to have transmits d 
him to Mr. Buchanan, in London, who, being a good- 
natured old gentleman, and anxious, just then, to gratify 
the universal Yankee nation, might, for the joke's sake, 
have got him admittance to the Queen, who had fairly 
laid herself open to his visit, and has received hundreds 
of our countrymen on infinitely slighter grounds. But 
I was inexorable, being turned to flint by the insuffer- 
able proximity of a fool, and refused to interfere with his 
business in any way except to procure him a passage 
home. I can see his face of mild, ridiculous despair, at 
this moment, and appreciate, better than I could then, 
how awi'ully cruel he must have felt my obduracy to be. 
For years and years, the idea of an interview with Queen 
Victoria had haunted his poor foolish mind ; and now, 
when he really stood on English ground, and the palace- 



26 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

door was hanging ajar for him, lie was expected to turn 
back, a penniless and bamboozled simpleton, merely be- 
cause an iron-hearted consul refused to lend him thirty 
shillings (so low had his demand ultimately sunk) to buy a 
second-class ticket on the rail for London ! 

He visited the Consulate several times afterwards, sub- 
sisting on a pittance that I allowed him in the hope of 
gradually starving him back to Connecticut, assailing 
me with the old petition at every opportunity, looking 
shabbier at every visit, but still thoroughly good-tem- 
pered, mildly stubborn, and smiling through his tears, 
not without a perception of the ludicrousness of his own 
position. Finally, he disappeared altogether, and whither 
he had wandered, and whether he ever saw the Queen, 
or wasted quite away in the endeavor, I never knew; 
but I remember unfolding the "Times," about that 
period, with a daily dread of reading an account of a 
ragged Yankee's attempt to steal into Buckingham Pal- 
ace, and how he smiled tearfully at his captors and be- 
sought them to introduce him to her Majesty. I submit 
to Mr. Secretary Seward that he ought to make diplo- 
matic remonstrances to the British Ministry, and require 
them to take such order that the Queen shall not any 
longer bewilder the wits of our poor compatriots by re- 
sponding to their epistles and thanking them for their 
photographs. 

One circumstance in the foregoing incident — I mean 
the unhappy storekeeper's notion of establishing his 
claim to an English estate — was common to a great 
many other applications, personal or by letter, with 
which I was favored by my countrymen. The cause 
of this peculiar insanity lies deep in the Anglo-Ameri- 
can heart. After all these bloody wars and vindic- 
tive animosities, we have still an unspeakable yearning 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 27 

towards England. When our forefathers left the old 
home, they pulled up many of their roots, but trailed 
along with them others, which were never snapt asunder 
by the tug of such a lengthening distance, nor have been 
torn out of the original soil by the violence of subse- 
quent struggles, nor severed by the edge of the sword. 
Even so late as these days, they remain entangled with 
our heart-strings, and might often have influenced our 
national cause like the tiller-ropes of a ship, if the rough 
gripe of England had been capable of managing so sen- 
sitive a kind of machinery. It has required nothing less 
than the boorishness, the stolidity, the self-sufficiency, 
the contemptuous jealousy, the half-sagacity, invariably 
blind of one eye and often distorted of the other, that 
characterize this strange people, to compel us to be a 
great nation in our own right, instead of continuing 
virtually, if not in name, a province of their small island. 
What pains did they take to shake us off, and have ever 
since taken to keep us wide apart from them ! It might 
seem their folly, but was really their fate, or, rather, 
the Providence of God, who has doubtless a work for us 
to do, in which the massive materiality of the English 
character would have been too ponderous a dead-weight 
upon our progress. And, besides, if England had been 
wise enough to twine our new vigor round about her 
ancient strength, her power would have been too firmly 
established ever to yield, in its due season, to the other- 
wise immutable law of imperial vicissitude. The earth 
might then have beheld the intolerable spectacle of a 
sovereignty and institutions, imperfect, but indestruc- 
tible. 

Nationally, there has ceased to be any peril of so in- 
auspicious and yet outwardly attractive an amalgamation. 
But as an individual, the American is of v en conscious of 



35 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

the deep-rooted sympathies that belong more fitly to 
times gone by, and feels a blind pathetic tendency to 
wander back again, which makes itself evident in such 
wild dreams as I have alluded to above, about English 
inheritances. A mere coincidence of names (the Yankee 
one, perhaps, having been assumed by legislative per- 
mission), a supposititious pedigree, a silver mug on 
which an anciently engraved coat-of-arms has been half 
scrubbed out, a seal Math an uncertain crest, an old 
yellow letter or document in faded ink, the more scantily 
legible the better, — rubbish of this kind, found in a 
neglected drawer, has been potent enough to turn the 
brain of many an honest Republican, especially if assisted 
by an advertisement for lost heirs, cut out of a British 
newspaper. There is no estimating or believing, till we 
come into a position to know it, what foolery lurks latent 
in the breasts of very sensible people. Remembering 
such sober extravagances, I should not be at all sur- 
prised to find that I am myself guilty of some un- 
suspected absurdity, that may appear to me the most 
substantial trait in my character. 

I might lill many pages with instances of this diseased 
American appetite for English soil. A respectable-look- 
ing woman, well advanced in life, of sour aspect, exceed- 
ingly homely, but decidedly New-Englandish in figure 
and manners, came to my office with a great bundle of 
documents, at the very first glimpse of which I appre- 
hended something terrible. Nor was I mistaken. The 
bundle contained evidences of her indubitable claim to 
the site on which Castle Street, the Town Hall, the Ex- 
change, and all the principal business part of Liverpool 
have long been situated ; and with considerable peremp- 
toriness, the good lady signified her expectation that I 
should take charge of her suit, and prosecute it to judg- 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 29 

ment; not, however, on the equitable condition of receiv- 
ing half the value of the property recovered (which, in 
case of complete success, would have made both of us ten 
or twenty fold millionnaires), but without recompense 
or reimbursement of legal expenses, solely as an inci- 
dent of my official duty. Another time came two ladies, 
bearing a letter of emphatic introduction from his Excel- 
lency the Governor of their native State, who testified 
in most satisfactory terms to their social respectability. 
They were claimants of a great estate in Cheshire, and 
announced themselves as blood-relatives of Queen Vic- 
toria, — a point, however, which they deemed it expe- 
dient to keep in the background until their territorial 
rights should be established, apprehending that the Lord 
High Chancellor might otherwise be less likely to come 
to a fair decision in respect to them, from a probable 
disinclination to admit new members into the royal kin. 
Upon my honor, I imagine that they had an eye to the 
possibility of the eventual succession of one or both of 
them to the crown of Great Britain through superiority 
of title over the Brunswick line ; although, being maiden 
ladies, like their predecessor Elizabeth, 1 hey could hard- 
ly have hoped to establish a lasting dynasty upon the 
throne. It proves, I trust, a certain disinterestedness 
on my part, that, encountering them thus in the dawn of 
their fortunes, I forbore to put in a plea for a future 
dukedom. 

Another visitor of the same class was a gentleman of 
refined manners, handsome figure, and remarkably intel- 
lectual aspect. Like many men of an adventurous cast, 
lie had so quiet a deportment, and such an apparent dis- 
inclination to general sociability, that you would have 
fancied him moving always along some peaceful and se- 
cluded walk of life. Yet, literally from his first hour, he 



30 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

had been tossed upon the surges of a most varied and 
tumultuous existence, having been born at sea, of Ameri- 
can parentage, but on board of a Spanish vessel, and 
spending many of the subsequent years in voyages, trav- 
els, and outlandish incidents and vicissitudes, which, 
methought, had hardly been paralleled since the days of 
Gulliver or De Toe. When his dignified reserve was 
overcome, he had the faculty of narrating these adven- 
tures with wonderful eloquence, working up his descrip- 
tive sketches with such intuitive perception of the pictu- 
resque points that the whole was thrown forward with a 
positively illusive effect, like matters of your own visual 
experience. In met, they were so admirably done that I 
could never more than half believe them, because the 
genuine affairs of life are not apt to transact themselves 
so artistically. Many of his scenes were laid in the 
East, and among those seldom-visited archipelagoes of 
the Indian Ocean, so that there was an Oriental fra- 
grance breathing through his talk and an odor of the 
Spice Islands still lingering in his garments. He had 
much to say of the delightful qualities of the Malay 
pirates, who, indeed, carry on a predatory warfare against 
the ships of all civilized nations, and cut every Christian 
throat among their prisoners ; but (except for deeds of 
that character, which are the rule and habit of their life, 
and matter of religion and conscience with them) they 
are a gentle -natured people, of primitive innocence and 
integrity. 

But his best story was about a race of men (if men 
they were) who seemed so fully to realize Swift's wicked 
fable of the Yahoos, that my friend was much exercised 
with psychological speculations whether or no they had 
any souls. They dwelt in the ^i'd? of Ceylon, like other 
savage beasts, hairy, and sooUed with tufts of fur, filthy, 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 31 

shamebss, weaponless (though warlike in their individual 
bent), tool-less, houseless, language-less, except for a few 
guttural sounds, hideously dissonant, whereby they held 
some rudest kind of communication among themselves. 
They lacked both memory and foresight, and were wholly 
destitute of government, social institutions, or law or 
rulership of any description, except the immediate tyranny 
of the strongest ; radically untamable, moreover, save 
that the people of the country managed to subject a few 
of the less ferocious and stupid ones to outdoor servi- 
tude among their other cattle. They were beastly in 
almost all their attributes, and that to such a degree that 
the observer, losing sight of any link betwixt them and 
manhood, could generally witness their brutalities with- 
out greater horror than at those of some disagreeable 
quadruped in a menagerie. And yet, at times, compar- 
ing what were the lowest general traits in his own race 
with what was highest in these abominable monsters, 
he found a ghastly similitude that half compelled him to 
recognize them as human brethren. 

After these Gulliverian researches, my agreeable ac- 
quaintance had fallen under the ban of the Dutch gov- 
ernment, and had suffered (this, at least, being matter 
of fact) nearly two years' imprisonment, with confiscation 
of a large amount of property, for which Mr. Belmont, 
our minister at the Hague, had just made a peremptory 
demand of reimbursement and damages. Meanwhile, 
since arriving in England on his way to the United 
States, he had been providentially led to inquire into the 
circumstances of his birth on shipboard, and had discov- 
ered that not himself alone, but another baby, had come 
into the world during the same voyage of the prolific 
vessel, and that there were almost irrefragable reasons 
for believing that these two children had been assigned to 



32 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

the wrong mothers. Many reminiscences of his early 
days confirmed him in the idea that his nominal parents 
were aware of the exchange. The family to which he 
felt authorized to attribute his lineage was that of a 
nobleman, in the picture-gallery of whose country-seat 
(whence, if 1 mistake not, our adventurous friend had 
just returned) he had discovered a portrait bearing a 
striking resemblance to himself. As soon as he should 
have reported the outrageous action of the Dutch gov- 
ernment to President Pierce and the Secretary of State, 
and recovered the confiscated property, he purposed to 
return to England and establish his claim to the noble- 
man's title and estate. 

I had accepted his Oriental fantasies (which, indeed, 
to do him justice, have been recorded by scientific socie- 
ties among tlr genuine phenomena of natural history), 
not as matters of indubitable credene:\ but as allowable 
specimens of an imaginative traveller's vivid coloring and 
rich embroidery on the coarse texture and dull neutral 
tints of truth. The English romance was among the lat- 
est communications that he intrusted to my private ear; 
and as soon as I heard the first chapter, — so wonderfully 
akin to what I might have wrought out of my own head, 
not unpractised in such figments, — I began to repent 
having made myself responsible for the future nobleman's 
passage homeward in the next Collins steamer. Never- 
theless, should his English rent-roll fall a little behind- 
hand, his Dutch claim for a hundred thousand dollars 
was certainly in the hands of our government, and might 
at least be valuable to the extent of thirty pounds, which 
I had engaged to pay on his behalf. But I have rea- 
son to fear that his Dutch riches turned out to be 
Dutch gilt or fairy gold, and, his English country-seat a 
mere castle in the air, — which I exceedingly regret, for 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 38 

he was a delightful companion and a very gentlemanly 
man. 

A Consul, in his position of universal responsibility, 
the general adviser aud helper, sometimes finds himself 
compelled to assume the guardianship of personages who, 
in their own sphere, are supposed capable of superintend- 
ing the highest interests of whole communities. An eld- 
erly Irishman, a naturalized citizen, once put the desire 
and expectation of all our penniless vagabonds into a 
very suitable phrase, by pathetically entreating me to be 
a "father to him"; and, simple as I sit scribbling here, 
I have acted a father's part, not only by scores of such 
unthrifty old children as himself, but by a progeny of far 
loftier pretensions. It may be well for persons who arc 
conscious of any radical weakness in their character, any 
besetting sin, any unlawful propensity, any unhallowed 
impulse, which (while surrounded with the manifold re- 
straints that protect a man from that treacherous and 
lifelong enemy, his lower self, in the circle of society 
where he is at home) they may have succeeded in keep- 
ing under the lock and key of strictest propriety, — it 
may be well for them, before seeking the perilous free- 
dom of a distant land, released from the watchful eyes of 
neighborhoods and coteries, lightened of that wearisome 
burden, an immaculate name, and blissfully obscure after 
years of local prominence, — it may be well for such in- 
dividuals to know that when they set foot on a foreign 
shore, the long-imprisoned Evil, scenting a wild license 
in the unaccustomed atmosphere, is apt to grow riotous 
in its iron cage. It rattles the rusty barriers with gigan- 
tic turbulence, and if there be an infirm joint anywhere 
in the framework, it breaks madly forth, compressing the 
mischief of a lifetime into a little space. 

A parcel of letters had been accumulating at the Con- 
2* o 



34 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

sulate for two or three weeks, directed to a certain Doc- 
tor of Divinity, who had left America by a sailing-packet 
and was still upon the sea. In due time, the vessel ar- 
rived, and the reverend Doctor paid me a visit. He was 
a fine-looking middle-aged gentleman, a perfect model of 
clerical propriety, scholar-like, yet with the air of a man 
of the world rather than a student, though overspread 
with the graceful sanctity of a popular metropolitan 
divine, a part of whose duty it might be to exemplify 
the natural accordance between Christianity and good- 
breeding. He seemed a little excited, as an American is 
apt to be on first arriving in England, but conversed with 
intelligence as well as animation, making himself so agree- 
able that his visit stood out in considerable relief from 
the monotony of my daily commonplace. As I learned 
from authentic sources, he was somewhat distinguished 
hi his own region for fervor and eloquence in the pulpit, 
but was now compelled to relinquish it temporarily for 
the purpose of renovating his impaired health by an ex- 
tensive tour in Europe. Promising to dine with me, he 
took up his bundle of letters and went away. 

The Doctor, however, failed to make his appearance at 
dinner-time, or to apologize the next day for his absence ; 
and in the course of a day or two more, I forgot all about 
him, concluding that he must have set forth on his Con- 
tinental travels, the plan of which he had sketched out at 
our interview. But, by and by, I received a call from the 
master of the vessel in which he had arrived. He was in 
some alarm about his passenger, whose luggage remained 
on shipboard, but of whom nothing had been heard or 
seen since the moment of his departure from the Consul- 
ate. We conferred together, the captain and I, about 
the expediency of setting the police on the traces (if any 
were to be found) of our vanished friend ; but it struck 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 35 

me that the good captain was singularly reticent, and 
that there was something a little mysterious in a few 
points that he hinted at rather than expressed; so that, 
scrutinizing the affair carefully, I surmised that the inti- 
macy of life on shipboard might have taught him more 
about the reverend gentleman than, for some reason or 
other, he deemed it prudent to reveal. At home, in our 
native country, I would have looked to the Doctor's per- 
sonal safety and left his reputation to take care of itself, 
knowing that the good fame of a thousand saintly clergy- 
men would amply dazzle out any lamentable spot on a 
single brother's character. But in scornful and invidious 
England, on the idea that the credit of the sacred office 
was measurably intrusted to my discretion, I could not 
endure, for the sake of American Doctors of Divinity 
generally, that this particular Doctor should cut an igno- 
ble figure in the police reports of the English newspapers, 
except at the last necessity. The clerical body, I flatter 
myself, will acknowledge that I acted on their own prin- 
ciple. Besides, it was now too late ; the mischief and 
violence, if any had been impending, were not of a kind 
which it requires the better part of a week to perpetrate; 
and to sum up the entire matter, I felt certain, from a 
good deal of somewhat similar experience, that, if the 
missing Doctor still breathed this vital air, he would 
turn up at the Consulate as soon as his money should be 
stolen or spent. 

Precisely a week after this reverend person's disappear- 
ance, there came to my office a tall, middle-aged gentle- 
man in a blue military surtout, braided at the seams, but 
out at elbows, and as shabby as if the wearer had been 
bivouacking in it throughout a Crimean campaign. It 
was buttoned up to the very chin, except where three or 
four of the buttons were lost ; nor was there any glimpse 



36 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

of a white shirt-collar illuminating the rusty black cravat. 
A grisly mustache was just beginning to roughen the 
stranger's upper lip. He looked disreputable to the last 
degree, but still had a ruined air of good society glim- 
mering about him, like a few specks of polish on a sword- 
blade that has lain corroding in a mud-puddle. I took 
him to be some American marine officer, of dissipated 
habits, or perhaps a cashiered British major, stumbling 
into the wrong quarters through the unrectified bewilder- 
ment of last night's debauch. He greeted me, however, 
with polite familiarity, as though we had been previously 
acquainted; whereupon I drew coldly back (as sensible 
people naturally do, whether from strangers or former 
friends, when too evidently at odds with fortune) and re- 
quested to know mIid my visitor might be, and what was 
his business at the Consulate. " Am I then so changed ? " 
he exclaimed with a vast depth of tragic intonation ; and 
after a little blind and bewildered talk, behold! the truth 
Hashed upon me. It was the Doctor of Divinity ! If I 
had meditated a scene or a coup de f heat re, I could not 
have contrived a more effectual one than by this simple 
and genuine difficulty of recognition. The poor Divine 
must have felt that he had lost his personal identity 
through the misadventures of one little week. And, to 
say the truth, lie did look as if, like Job, on account of 
his especial sanctity, he had been delivered over to the 
direst temptations of Satan, and proving weaker than the 
man of Uz, the Arch Enemy had been empowered to 
drag him through Tophet, transforming him, in the pro- 
cess, from the most decorous of metropolitan clergymen 
into the rowdiest and dirtiest of disbanded officers. I 
never fathomed the mystery of his military costume, but 
conjectured that a lurking sense of fitness had induced 
him to exchange his clerical garments for this habit of a 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 37 

sinner ; nor can I tell precisely into what pitfall, not more 
of vice than terrible calamity, he had precipitated him- 
self, — being more than satisfied to know that the out- 
casts of society can sink no lower than this poor, dese- 
crated wretch had sunk: 

The opportunity, I presume, does not often happen to 
a layman, of administering moral and religious reproof 
to a Doctor of Divinity ; but finding the occasion thrust 
upon me, and the hereditary Puritan waxing strong in 
my breast, I deemed it a matter of conscience not to let 
it pass entirely unimproved. The truth is, I was un- 
speakably shocked and disgusted. Not, however, that I 
was then to learn that clergymen are made of the same 
flesh and blo.od as other people, and perhaps lack one 
small safeguard which the rest of us possess, because 
they are aware of their own peccability, and therefore 
cannot look up to the clerical class for the proof of the 
possibility of a pure life on earth, with such reverential 
confidence as we are prone to do. But I remembered 
the innocent faith of my boyhood, and the good old 
silver-headed clergyman, who seemed to me as much a 
saint then on earth as he is now in heaven, and partly 
for whose sake, through all these darkening years, I re- 
tain a devout, though not intact nor unwavering respect 
for the entire fraternity. What a hideous wrong, there- 
fore, had the backslider inflicted on his brethren, and still 
more on me, who much needed whatever fragments of 
broken reverence (broken, not as concerned religion, but 
its earthly institutions and professors) it might yet be 
possible to patch into a sacred image! Should all pul- 
pits and communion-tables have thenceforth a stain upon 
them, and the guilty one go unrebuked for it ? So I 
spoke to the unhappy man as I never thought myself war- 
ranted in speaking to any other mortal, hitting him hard, 



38 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES, 

doing my utmost to find out his vulnerable part, and 
prick him into the depths of it. And not without more 
effect than I had dreamed of, or desired ! 

No doubt, the novelty of the Doctor's reversed posi- 
tion, thus standing up to receive such a fulmination as 
the clergy have heretofore arrogated the exclusive right 
of inflicting, might give additional weight and sting to 
the words which I found utterance for. But there was 
another reason (which, had I in the least suspected it, 
would have closed my lips at once) for his feeling mor- 
bidly sensitive to the cruel rebuke that I administered. 
The unfortunate man had come to me, laboring under 
one of the consequences of his riotous outbreak, in the 
shape of delirium tremens; he bore a hell within the 
compass of his own breast, all the torments of which 
blazed up with tenfold inveteracy when I thus took 
upon myself the Devil's office of stirring up the red-hot 
embers. His emotions, as well as the external move- 
ment and expression of them by voice, countenance, and 
gesture, were terribly exaggerated by the tremendous 
vibration of nerves resulting from the disease. It was 
the deepest tragedy I ever witnessed.. I know suffi- 
ciently, from that one experience, how a condemned soul 
would manifest its agonies ; and for the future, if I have 
anything to do with sinners, I mean to operate upon 
them through sympathy, and not rebuke. What had I 
to do with rebuking him? The disease, long latent in 
his heart, had shown itself in a frightful eruption on the 
surface of his life. That was all ! Is it a thing to scold 
the sufferer for ? 

To conclude this wretched story, the poor Doctor of 
Divinity, having been robbed of all his money in this 
little airing beyoild the limits of propriety, was easily 
persuaded to give up the intended tour and return to his 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 39 

bereaved flock, who, very probably, were thereafter con- 
scious of an increased unction in his soul-stirring elo- 
quence, without suspecting the awful depths into which 
their pastor had dived in quest of it. His voice is now 
silent. I leave it to members of his own profession to 
decide whether it was better for him thus to sin outright, 
and so to be let into the miserable secret what manner 
of man he was, or to have gone through life outwardly 
unspotted, making the first discovery of his latent evil 
at the judgment-seat. It has occurred to me that his 
dire calamity, as both he and I regarded it, might have 
been the only method by which precisely such a man as 
himself, and so situated, could be redeemed. He has 
learned, ere now, how that matter stood. 

For a man, with a natural tendency to meddle with 
other people's business, there could not possibly be a 
more congenial sphere than the Liverpool Consulate. 
For myself, I had never been in the habit of feeling that 
I could sufficiently comprehend any particular conjunc- 
tion of circumstances with human character, to justify 
me in thrusting in my awkward agency among the in- 
tricate and unintelligible machinery of Providence. I 
have always hated to give advice, especially when there 
is a prospect of its being taken. It is only one-eyed 
people who love to advise, or have any spontaneous 
promptitude of action. When a man opens both his 
eyes, he generally sees about as many reasons for acting 
in any one way as in any other, and quite as many for 
acting in neither; and is therefore likely to leave his 
friends to regulate their own conduct, and also to remain 
quiet as regards his especial affairs till necessity shall 
prick him onward. Nevertheless, the world and individ- 
uals flourish upon a constant succession of blunders. 
The secret of English practical success lies in their char- 



40 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

acteristic faculty *of shutting one eye, whereby they get 
so distinct and decided a view of what immediately con- 
cerns them that they go stumbling towards it over a 
hundred insurmountable obstacles, and achieve a mag- 
nificent triumph without ever being aware of half its 
difficulties. If General McClellan could but have shut 
his left eye, the right one would long ago have guided us 
into Richmond. Meanwhile, I have strayed far away 
from the Consulate, where, as I was about to say, I was 
compelled, in spite of my disinclination, to impart both 
advice and assistance in multifarious affairs that did not 
personally concern me, and presume that I effected about 
as little mischief as other men in similar contingencies. 
The duties of the office carried me to prisons, police- 
courts, hospitals, lunatic asylums, coroner's inquests, 
death-beds, funerals, and brought me in contact with 
insane people, criminals, ruined speculators, wild adven- 
turers, diplomatists, brother-consuls, and all manner of 
simpletons and unfortunates, in greater number and 
variety than I had ever dreamed of as pertaining to 
America; in addition to whom there was an equivalent 
multitude of English rogues, dexterously counterfeiting 
the genuine Yankee article. It required great discrim- 
ination not to be taken in by these last-mentioned scoun- 
drels ; for they knew how to imitate our national traits, 
had been at great pains to instruct themselves as regarded 
American localities, and were not readily to be caught by 
a cross-examination as to the topographical features, pub- 
lic institutions, or prominent inhabitants of the places 
where they pretended to belong. The best shibboleth I 
ever hit upon lay in the pronunciation of the word 
"been," which the English invariably make to rhyme 
with " green," and we Northerners, at least (in ac- 
cordance, I think, with the custom of Shakespeare's time), 
universally pronounce " bin." 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. . 41 

All the matters that I have been treating of, however, 
"were merely incidental, and quite distinct from the real 
business of the office. A great part of the wear and 
tear of mind and temper resulted from the bad relations 
between the seamen and officers of American ships. 
Scarcely a morning passed, but that some sailor came to 
show the marks of his ill-usage on shipboard. Often, it 
was a whole crew of them, each with his broken head or 
livid bruise, and all testifying with one voice to a con- 
stant series of savage outrages during the voyage ; or, it 
might be, they laid an accusation of actual murder, per- 
petrated by the first or second officers with many blows 
of steel-knuckles, a rope's end, or a marline-spike, or by 
the captain, in the twinkling of an eye, with a shot of his 
pistol. Taking the seamen's view of the case, you would 
suppose that the gibbet was hungry for the murderers. 
Listening to the captain's defence, you would seem to 
discover that he and his officers were the humanest of 
mortals, but were driven to a wholesome severity by the 
mutinous conduct of the crew, who, moreover, had them- 
selves slain their comrade in the drunken riot and con- 
fusion of the first day or two after they were shipped. 
Looked at judicially, there appeared to be no right side to 
the matter, nor any right side possible in so thoroughly 
vicious a system as that of the American mercantile ma- 
rine. The Consul could do little, except to take deposi- 
tions, hold forth the greasy Testament to be profaned 
anew with perjured kisses, and, in a few instances of 
murder or manslaughter, carry the case before an Eng- 
lish magistrate, who generally decided that the evidence 
was too contradictory to authorize the transmission of 
the accused for trial in America. The newspapers all 
over England contained paragraphs, inveighing against 
the cruelties of American shipmasters. The British Var- 



42 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

liament look up the matter (for nobody is so humane as 
John Bull, when his benevolent propensities are to be 
gratified by finding fault with his neighbor), and caused 
Lord John Russell to remonstrate with our government 
on the outrages for which it was responsible before the 
world, and which it failed to prevent or punish. The 
American Secretary of State, old General Cass, responded, 
with perfectly astounding ignorance of the subject, to the 
effect that the statements of outrages had probably been 
exaggerated, that the present laws of the United States 
were quite adequate to deal with them, and that the in- 
terference of the British Minister was uncalled for. 

The truth is, that the state of affairs was really very 
horrible, and could be met by no laws at that time (or I 
presume now) in existence. I once thought of writing a 
pamphlet on the subject, but quitted the Consulate before 
finding time to effect my purpose; and all that phase of 
my life immediately assumed so dreamlike a consistency 
that I despaired of making it seem solid or tangible to the 
public. And now it looks distant and dim, like troubles 
of a century ago. The origin of the evil lay in the char- 
acter of the seamen, scarcely any of whom were Ameri- 
can, but the offscourings and refuse of all the seaports of 
the world, such stuff as piracy is made of, together with 
a considerable intermixture of returning emigrants, and 
a sprinkling of absolutely kidnapped American citizens. 
Even witli such material, the ships were very inadequately 
manned. The shipmaster found himself upon the deep, 
with a vast responsibility of property and human life upon 
his hands, and no means of salvation except by compel- 
ling his inefficient and demoralized crew to heavier ex- 
ertions than could reasonably be required of the same 
number of able seamen. By law he had been intrusted 
with no discretion of judicious punishment , he therefore 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 43 

habitually left the whole matter of discipline to his irre- 
sponsible mates, men often of scarcely a superior quality 
to the crew. Hence ensued a great mass of petty out- 
rages, unjustifiable assaults, shameful indignities, and 
nameless cruelty, demoralizing alike to the perpetrators 
and the sufferers ; these enormities fell into the ocean 
hot ween the two countries, and could be punished in 
neither. Many miserable stories come back upon my 
memory as I write ; wrongs that were immense, but for 
which nobody could be held responsible, and which, in- 
deed, the closer you looked into them, the more they lost 
the aspect of wilful misdoing and assumed that of an in- 
evitable calamity. It was the fault of a system, the mis- 
fortune of an individual. Be that as it may, however, 
there will be no possibility of dealing effectually with 
these troubles as long as we deem it inconsistent with 
our national dignity or interests to allow the English 
courts, under such restrictions as may seem fit, a juris- 
diction over offences perpetrated on board our vessels in 
mid-ocean. 

In such a life as this, the American shipmaster devel- 
ops himself into a man of iron energies, dauntless cour- 
age, and inexhaustible resource, at the expense, it must 
be acknowledged, of some of the higher and gentler traits 
which might do him excellent service in maintaining his 
authority. The class has deteriorated of late years on 
account of the narrower field of selection, owing chiefly 
to the diminution of that excellent body of respectably 
educated New England seamen, from the flower of whom 
the officers used to be recruited. Yet I found them, in 
many cases, very agreeable and intelligent companions, 
with less nonsense about them than landsmen usually 
have, eschewers of fine-spun theories, delighting in 
square and tangible ideas, but occasionally infested with 



14 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

prejudices that stuck to their brains like barnacles to a 
ship's bottom. I never could flatter myself that I was a 
general favorite witli them. One or two, perhaps, even 
now, would scarcely meet me on amicable terms. En- 
dowed universally with a great pertinacity of will, they 
especially disliked the interference of a consul with 
their management on shipboard; notwithstanding which 
I thrust in my very limited authority at every availa- 
ble opening, and did the utmost that lay in my power, 
though wilh lamentably small effect, towards enforcing a 
better kind of discipline. They thought, no doubt (and 
on plausible grounds enough, but scarcely appreciating 
just that one little grain of hard New England sense, 
oddly thrown in among the flimsier composition of the 
Consul's character), that he, a landsman, a bookman, 
and, as people said of him, a fanciful recluse, could not 
possibly understand anything of the difficulties or the 
necessities of a shipmaster's position. But their cold 
regards were rather acceptable than otherwise, for it is 
exceedingly awkward to assume a judicial austerity in 
the morning towards a man with whom you have been 
hobnobbing over night. 

With the technical details of the business of that great 
Consulate (for great it then was, though now, I fear, wo- 
fully fallen off, and perhaps never to be revived in anything 
like its former extent), I did not much interfere. They 
could safely be left to the treatment of two as faithful, 
upright, and competent subordinates, both Englishmen, 
as ever a man was fortunate enough to meet with, in a 
line of life altogether new and strange to him. I had 
come over with instructions to supply both their places 
with Americans, but, possessing a happy faculty of know- 
ing my own iuterest and the public's, I quietly kept hold 
of them, being little inclined to open the consular doors 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 45 

to a spy of the State Department or an intriguer for my 
own office. The venerable Vice-Consul, Mr. Pearce, had 
witnessed the successive arrivals of a score of newly ap- 
pointed Consuls, shadowy and short-lived dignitaries, and 
carried his reminiscences back to the epoch of Consul 
Maury, who was appointed by Washington, and has ac- 
quired almost the grandeur of a mythical personage in 
the annals of the Consulate. The principal clerk, Mr. 
Wilding, who has since succeeded to the Vice-Consulship, 
was a man of English integrity, — not that the English 
are more honest than ourselves, but only there is a certain 
sturdy reliableness common among them, which we do 
not quite so invariably manifest in just these subordi- 
nate positions, • — -of English integrity, combined with 
American acuteness of intellect, quick-wittedness, and 
diversity of talent. It seemed an immense pity that 
he should wear out his life at a desk, without a step in 
advance from year's end to year's end, when, had it been 
his luck to be born on our side of the water, his bright 
faculties and clear probity would have insured him emi- 
nent success in whatever path he might adopt. Mean- 
while, it would have been a sore mischance to me, had 
any better fortune on his part deprived me of Mr. Wild- 
ing's services. 

A fair amount of common-sense, some acquaintance 
with the United States Statutes, an insight into char- 
acter, a tact of management, a general knowledge of the 
world, and a reasonable but not too inveterately decided 
preference for his own will and judgment over those of 
interested people, — these natural attributes and moder- 
ate acquirements will enable a consul to perform mauy 
of his duties respectably, but not to dispense with a 
great variety of other qualifications, only attainable by 
long experience. Yet, 1 think, few consuls are so well 



46 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

accomplished. An appointment of whatever grade, in 
the diplomatic or consular service of America, is too 
often what the English call a "job"; that is to say, it 
is made on private and personal grounds, without a par- 
amount eye to the public good or the gentleman's espe- 
cial fitness for the position. It is not too much to say 
(of course allowing for a brilliant exception here and 
there), that an American never is thoroughly qualified 
for a foreign post, nor has time to make himself so, be- 
fore the revolution of the political wheel discards him 
from his office. Our country wrongs itself by permit- 
ting such a system of unsuitable appointments, and, still 
more, of removals for no cause, just when the incumbent 
might be beginning to ripen into usefulness. Mere igno- 
rance of official detail is of comparatively small moment; 
though it is considered indispensable, I presume, that a 
man in any private capacity shall be thoroughly ac- 
quainted with the machinery and operation of his busi- 
ness, and shall not necessarily lose his position on having 
attained such knowledge. But there are so many more 
important things to be thought of, in the qualifications 
of a foreign resident, that his technical dexterity or clum- 
siness is hardly worth mentioning. 

One great part of a consul's duty, for example, should 
consist in building up for himself a recognized position 
in the society where he resides, so that his local influence 
might be felt in behalf of his own country, and, so far as 
they are compatible (as they generally are to the utmost 
extent), for the interests of both nations. The foreign 
city should know that it has a permanent inhabitant 
and a hearty well-wisher in him. There are many con- 
junctures (and one of them is now upon us) where a 
long-established, honored, and trusted American citizen, 
holding a public position under our government in such 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 47 

a town as Liverpool, might go far towards swaying and 
directing the sympathies of the inhabitants. He might 
throw his own weight into the balance against mischief- 
makers ; he might have set his foot on the first little 
spark of malignant purpose, which the next wind may 
blow into a national war. But we wilfully give up all 
advantages of this kind. The position is totally beyond 
the attainment of an American; there to-day, bristling all 
over with the porcupine quills of our Republic, and gone 
to-morrow, just as he is becoming sensible of the broader 
and more generous patriotism which might almost amal- 
gamate with that of England, without iosing an atom of 
its native force and flavor. In the changes that appear 
to await us, and some of which, at least, can hardly fail 
to be for good, let us hope for a reform in this matter. 

For myself, as the gentle reader would spare me the 
trouble of saying, I was not at all the kind of man to 
grow into such an ideal Consul as I have here suggested. 
I never in my life desired to be burdened with public 
influence. I disliked my office from the first, and never 
came into any good accordance with it. Its dignity, so 
far as it had any, was an encumbrance ; the attentions it 
drew upon me (such as invitations to Mayor's banquets 
and public celebrations of all kinds, where, to my horror, 
I found myself expected to stand up and speak) were — 
as I may say without incivility or ingratitude, because 
there is nothing personal in that sort of hospitality — a 
bore. The official business was irksome, and often pain- 
ful. There was nothing pleasant about the whole affair, 
except the emoluments ; and even those, never too boun- 
tifully reaped, were diminished by more than half in the 
second or third year of my incumbency. All this being 
true, I was quite prepared, in advance of the inaugura- 
tion of Mr. Buchanan, to send in my resignation. When 



48 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

my successor arrived, I drew the long, delightful breath 
which first made me thoroughly sensible what an unnatu- 
ral life I had been leading, and compelled me to admire 
myself for having battled with it so sturdily. The new- 
comer proved to be a very genial and agreeable gentle- 
man, an E. F. V., and, as he pleasantly acknowledged, a 
Southern Fire-Eater, — - an announcement to which I re- 
sponded, with similar good-humor and self-complacency, 
by parading my descent from an ancient line of Massa- 
chusetts Puritans. Since our brief acquaintanceship, my 
iire-eating friend has had ample opportunities to banquet 
on his favorite diet, hot and hot, in the Confederate ser- 
vice. For myself, as soon as I was out of office, the ret- 
rospect began to look unreal. I could scarcely believe 
that it was I, — that figure whom they called a Consul, 
— but a sort of Double Ganger, who had been permitted 
to assume my aspect, under which he went through his 
shadowy duties with a tolerable show of efficiency, while 
my real self had lain, as regarded my proper mode of be- 
ing and acting, in a state of suspended animation. 

The same sense of illusion still pursues me. There is 
some mistake in this matter. I have been writing about 
another man's consular experiences, with which, through 
some mysterious medium of transmitted ideas, I find my- 
self intimately acquainted, but in which I cannot possibly 
have had a personal interest. Is it not a dream alto- 
gether ? The figure of that poor Doctor of Divinity looks 
wonderfully lifelike ; so do those of the Oriental adven- 
turer with the visionary coronet above his brow, and the 
moonstruck visitor of the Queen, and the poor old wan- 
derer, seeking his native country through English high- 
ways and by-ways for almost thirty years ; and so would 
a hundred others that I might summon up with similar 
distinctness. But were thev more than shadows ? 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 49 

Surely, I think not. Nor are these present pages a bit 
of intrusive autobiography. Let not the reader wrong 
me by supposing it. I never should have written with 
half such unreserve, iiad it been a portion of this life con- 
genial with my nature, which I am living now, instead of 
a series of incidents and characters entirely apart from 
my own concerns, and on which the qualities personally 
proper to me could have had no bearing. Almost the 
only real incidents, as I see them now, were the visits of 
a young English friend, a scholar and a literary amateur, 
between whom and myself there sprung up an affection- 
ate, and, I trust, not transitory regard. He used to come 
and sit or stand by my fireside, talking vivaciously and 
eloquently with me about literature and life, his own na- 
tional characteristics and mine, with such kindly endur- 
ance of the many rough republicanisms wherewith I 
assailed him, and such frank and amiable assertion of 
all sorts of English prejudices and mistakes, that I under- 
stood his countrymen infinitely the better for him, and 
was almost prepared to love the intensest Englishman of 
them all, for his sake. It would gratify my cherished re- 
membrance of this dear friend, if I could manage, without 
offending him, or letting the public know it, to introduce 
his name upon my page. Bright was the illumination of 
my dusky little apartment, as often as he made his ap- 
pearance there ! 

The English sketches which I have been offering to 
the public comprise a few of the more external and 
therefore more readily manageable things that I took 
note of, in many escapes from the imprisonment of my 
consular servitude. Liverpool, though not very delight- 
ful as a place of residence, is a most convenient and 
admirab'e point to get away from. London is only live 
hours off by the fast train. Chester, the most curious 

3 D 



50 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

town in England, with its encompassing wall, its ancient 
rows', and its venerable cathedral, is close at hand. 
North Wales, with all its hills and ponds, its noble sea- 
scenery, its multitude of gray castles and strange old 
villages, may be glanced at in a summer day or two. 
The lakes and mountains of Cumberland and Westmore- 
land may be reached before dinner-time. The haunted 
and legendary Isle of Man, a little kingdom by itself, lies 
within the scope of an afternoon's voyage. Edinburgh 
or Glasgow are attainable over night, and Loch Lomond 
betimes in the morning. Visiting these famous localities, 
and a great many others, I hope chat I do not compromise 
my American patriotism by acknowledging that I was 
often conscious of a fervent hereditary attachment to the 
nat ive soil of our forefathers, and felt it to be our own 
Old Home. 




LEAMINGTON SPA. 




N the course of several visits and stays of con- 
siderable length we acquired a homelike feeling 
towards Leamington, and came back thither 
again and again, chiefly because Ave had been there be- 
fore. Wandering and wayside people, such as we had 
long since become, retain a few of the instincts that 
belong to a more settled way of life, and often prefer 
familiar and commonplace objects (for the very reason 
that they are so) to the dreary strangeness of scenes that 
might be thought much belter worth the seeing. There 
is a small nest of a place in Leamington — at No. 10, 
Lansdowne Circus — upon which, to this day, my remi- 
niscences are apt to settle as one of the coziest nooks in 
England or in the world ; not that it had any special 
charm of its own, but only that we stayed long enough 
to know it well, and even to grow a little tired of it. 
In my opinion, the very tedtousness of home and friends 
makes a part of what we love them for; if it be not 
mixed in sufficiently with the other elements of life, there 
may be mad enjoyment, but no happiness. 

The modest abode to which I have alluded forms one 
of a circular range of pretty, moderate-sized, two-story 
houses, all built on nearly the same plan, and each pro- 
vided with its little grass-plot, its flowers, its tufts of 



5£ LEAMINGTON SPA. 

box trimmed into globes and other fantastic shapes, and 
its verdant hedges shutting the house in from the com- 
mon drive and dividing it from its equally cosey neigh- 
bors. Coming out of the door, and taking a turn round 
the circle of sister-dwellings, it is difficult to find your 
way back by any distinguishing individuality of your own 
habitation. In the centre of the Circus is a space fenced 
in with iron railing, a small play -place and sylvan retreat 
for the children of the precinct, permeated by brief paths 
through the fresh English grass, and shadowed by vari- 
ous shrubbery ; amid which, if you like, you may fancy 
yourself in a deep seclusion, though probably the mark of 
eye-shot from the windows of all the surrounding houses. 
But, in truth, with regard to the rest of the town and the 
world at large, an abode here is a genuine seclusion ; for 
the ordinary stream of life does not run through this lit- 
tle, quiet pool, and few or none of the inhabitants seem 
to be troubled with any business or outside activities. I 
used to set them down as half-pay officers, dowagers of 
narrow income, elderly maiden ladies, and other people 
of respectability, but small account, such as hang on the 
world's skirts rather than actually belong to it. The 
quiet of the place was seldom disturbed, except by the 
grocer and butcher, who came to receive orders, or by 
the cabs, hackney-coaches, and Bath-chairs, in which the 
ladies took an infrequent airing, or the livery-steed which 
the retired captain sometimes bestrode for a morning ride, 
or by the red-coated postman who went his rounds twice 
a day to deliver letters, and again in the evening, ringing 
a hand-bell, to take letters for the mail. In merely men- 
tioning these slight interruptions of its sluggish stillness, 
I seem to myself to disturb too much the atmosphere of 
epiiet that brooded over the spot ; whereas its impression 
upon me was, that the world had never found the way 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 53 

hither, or had forgotten it, and that the fortunate inhab- 
itants were the only ones who possessed the spell-word 
of admittance. Nothing could have suited me better, at 
the time ; for I had been holding a position of public ser- 
vitude, which imposed upon me (among a great many 
lighter duties) the ponderous necessity of being univer- 
sally civil and sociable. 

Nevertheless, if a man were seeking the bustle of 
society, he might find it more readily in Leamington 
than in most other English towns. It is a permanent 
watering-place, a sort of institution to which I do not 
know any close parallel in American life : for such places 
as Saratoga bloom only for the summer-season, and offer 
a thousand dissimilitudes even then; while Leamington 
seems to be always in flower, and serves as a home to 
the homeless all the year round. Its original nucleus, 
the plausible excuse for the town's coming into prosper- 
ous existence, lies in the fiction of a chalybeate well, 
which, indeed, is so far a reality that out of its magical 
depths have gushed streets, groves, gardens, mansions, 
shops, and churches, and spread themselves along the 
banks of the little river Learn. This miracle accom- 
plished, the beneficent fountain has retired beneath a 
pump-room, and appears to have given up all preten- 
sions to the remedial virtues formerly attributed to it. 
I know not whether its waters are ever tasted nowa- 
days ; but not the less does Leamington — in pleasant 
Warwickshire, at the very midmost point of England, in 
a good hunting neighborhood, and surrounded by coun- 
try-seats and castles — continue to be a resort of tran- 
sient visitors, and the more permanent abode of a class 
of genteel, unoccupied, well-to-do, but not very wealthy 
people, such as are hardly known among ourselves. 
Persons who have no country-houses, and whose lor- 



54 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

tunes are inadequate to a London expenditure, find here, 
I suppose, a sort of town and country life in one. 

In its present aspect the town is of no great age. In 
contrast with the antiquity of many places in its neigh- 
borhood, it has a bright, new face, and seems almost to 
smile even amid the sombreness of an English autumn. 
Nevertheless, it is hundreds upon hundreds of years old, 
if we reckon up that sleepy lapse of time during which 
it existed as a small village of thatched houses, clustered 
round a priory ; and it would still have been precisely 
such a rural village, but for a certain Dr. Jephson, who 
lived within the memory of man, and who found out 
the magic well, and foresaw what fairy wealth might be 
made to flow from it, A public garden has been laid out 
along the margin of the Learn, and called the Jephson 
Garden, in honor of him who created the prosperity of 
his native spot. A little way within the garden-gate 
there is a circular temple of Grecian architecture, be- 
neath the dome of which stands a marble statue of the 
good Doctor, very well executed, and representing him 
with a face of fussy activity and benevolence : just the 
kind of man, if luck favored him, to build up the for- 
tunes of those about him, or, quite as probably, to blight 
his whole neighborhood by some disastrous speculation. 

The Jephson Garden is very beautiful, like most other 
English pleasure-grounds ; for, aided by their moist cli- 
mate and not too fervid sun, the landscape-gardeners 
excel in converting flat or tame surfaces into attractive 
scenery, chiefly through the skilful arrangement of trees 
and shrubbery. An Englishman aims at this effect even 
in the little patches under the windows of a suburban 
villa, and achieves it on a larger scale in a tract of many 
acres. The Garden is shadowed with trees of a fine 
growth, standing alone, or in dusky groves and dense 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 55 

entanglements, pervaded by woodland paths ; and emerg- 
ing from these pleasant glooms, we come upon a breadth 
of sunshine, where the greensward — so vividly green 
that it has a kind of lustre in it — is spotted with beds 
of gemlike flowers. Rustic chairs and benches are scat- 
tered about, some of them ponderously fashioned out of 
the stumps of obtruncated trees, and others more artfully 
made with intertwining branches, or perhaps an imitation 
of such frail handiwork in iron. In a central part of the 
Garden is an archery-ground, where laughing maidens 
practise at the butts, generally missing their ostensible 
mark, but, by the mere grace of their action, sending an 
unseen shaft into some young man's heart. There is 
space, moreover, within these precincts, for an artificial 
lake, with a little green island in the midst of it ; both 
lake and island being the haunt of swans, whose aspect 
and movement in the water are most beautiful and 
stately, — most infirm, disjointed, and decrepit, when, 
unadvisedly, they see fit to emerge, and try to walk upon 
dry land. In the latter case, they look like a breed of 
uncommonly ill-contrived geese ; and I record the matter 
here for the sake of the moral,- — that we should never 
pass judgment on the merits of any person or thing, un- 
less we behold them in the sphere and circumstances to 
which they are specially adapted. In still another part 
of the Garden there is a labyrinthine maze, formed of an 
intricacy of hedge-bordered walks, involving himself in 
which, a man might wander for hours inextricably within 
a circuit of only a few yards. It seemed to me a sad 
emblem of the mental and moral perplexities in which 
we sometimes go astray, petty in scope, yet large enough 
to entangle a lifetime, and bewilder us with a weary 
movement, but no genuine progress. 

The Learn, — the "high complectioned Learn," as 



56 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

Drayton calls it, — after drowsing across the principal 
street of the town beneath a handsome bridge, skirts 
along the margin of the Garden without any perceptible 
flow. Heretofore I had fancied the Concord the laziest 
river in the world, but now assign that amiable distinc- 
tion to the little English stream. Its water is by no 
means transparent, but has a greenish, goose-puddly hue, 
which, however, accords well with the other coloring and 
characteristics of the scene, and is disagreeable neither to 
sight nor smell. Certainly, this river is a perfect feature 
of that gentle picturesqueness in which England is so 
rich, sleeping, as it does, beneath a margin of willows 
that droop into its bosom, and other trees, of deeper ver- 
dure than our own country can boast, inclining lovingly 
over it. On the Garden-side it is bordered by a shadowy, 
secluded grove, with winding paths among its boskiness, 
affording many a peep at the river's imperceptible lapse 
and tranquil gleam ; and on the opposite shore stands 
the priory-church, with its churchyard full of shrubbery 
and tombstones. 

The business portion of the town clusters about the 
banks of the Leain, and is naturally densest arouud the 
well to which the modern settlement owes its existence. 
Here are the commercial inns, the post-office, the furni- 
ture-dealers, the iron-mongers, and all the heavy and 
homely establishments that connect themselves even with 
the airiest modes of human life ; while upward from the. 
river, by a long and gentle ascent, rises the principal 
street, which is very bright and cheerful in its physiog- 
nomy, and adorned with shop-fronts almost as splendid 
as those of London, though on a diminutive seale. There 
are likewise side-streets and cross-streets, many of which 
are bordered with the beautiful Warwickshire elm, a 
most unusual kind of adornment for an English town ; 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 57 

and spacious avenues, wide enough to afford room for 
stately groves, with foot-paths running beneath the lofty 
shade, and rooks cawing and chattering so high in the 
tree-tops that their voices get musical before reaching the 
earth. The houses are mostly built in blocks and ranges, 
in which every separate tenement is a repetition of its 
fellow, though the architecture of the different ranges is 
sufficiently various. Some of them are almost palatial 
in size and sumptuousness of arrangement. Then, on 
the outskirts of the town, there are detached villas, en- 
closed within that separate domain of high stone fence 
and embowered shrubbery which an Englishman so loves 
to build and plant around his abode, presenting to the 
public only an iron gate, with a gravelled carriage-drive 
winding away towards the half-hidden mansion. Wheth- 
er in street or suburb, Leamington may fairly be called 
beautiful, and, at some points, magnificent ; but by and 
by you become doubtfully suspicious of a somewhat unreal 
finery : it is pretentious, though not glaringly so ; it has 
been built with malice aforethought, as a place of gentil- 
ity and enjoyment. Moreover, splendid as the houses 
look, and comfortable as they often are, there is a name- 
less something about them, betokening that they have not 
grown out of human hearts, but are the creations of a 
skilfully applied human intellect : no man has reared any 
one of them, whether stately or humble, to be his life- 
long residence, wherein to bring up his children, who are 
to inherit it as a home. They are nicely contrived lodging- 
houses, one and all, — the best as well as the shabbiest 
of them, — and therefore inevitably lack some nameless 
property that a home should have. This was the case 
with our own little snuggery in Lansdowne Circus, as 
with all the rest; it had not grown out of anybody's in- 
dividual need, but was Luilt to let or sell, and was there- 
3* 



58 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

fore like a ready-made garment, — a tolerable fit, hut 
only tolerable. 

All these blocks, ranges, and detached villas are 
adorned with the finest and most aristocratic names that 
I have found anywhere in England, except, perhaps, in 
Bath, which is the great metropolis of that second-class 
gentility with which watering-places are chiefly popu- 
lated. Lansdowne Crescent, Lansdowne Circus, Lans- 
downe Terrace, Regent Street, Warwick Street, Claren- 
don Street, the Upper and Lower Parade : such are a 
few of the designations. Parade, indeed, is a well-chosen 
name for the principal street, along which the population 
of the idle town draws itself out for daily review and 
display. I only wish that my descriptive powers would 
enable me to throw off a picture of the scene at a sunny 
noontide, individualizing each character with a touch: 
the great people alighting from their carriages at the 
principal shop-doors ; the elderly ladies and infirm Indian 
officers drawn along in Bath-chairs ; the comely, rather 
than pretty, English girls, with their deep, healthy bloom, 
which an American taste is apt to deem fitter for a milk- 
maid than for a lady; the mustached gentlemen with 
frogged surtouts and a military air; the nursemaids and 
chubby children, but no chubbier than our own, and 
scampering on slenderer legs ; the sturdy figure of John 
Bull in all varieties and of all ages, but ever with the 
stamp of authenticity somewhere about him. 

To say the truth, I have been holding the pen over my 
paper, purposing to write a descriptive paragraph or two 
about the throng on the principal Parade of Leamington, 
so arranging it as to present a sketch of the British out- 
of-door aspect on a morning walk of gentility ; but I find 
no personages quite sufficiently distinct and individual in 
my memory to supply the materials of such a panorama. 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 59 

Oddly enough, the only figure that comes fairly forth to 
my mind's eye is that of a dowager, one of hundreds 
whom I used to marvel at, all over England, but who 
have scarcely a representative among our own ladies of 
autumnal life, so thin, careworn, and frail, as age usually 
makes the latter. 

I have heard a good deal of the tenacity with which 
English ladies retain their personal beauty to a late 
period of life ; but (not to suggest that an American eve 
needs use and cultivation before it can quite appreciate 
the charm of English beauty at any age) it strikes me 
that an English lady of fifty is apt to become a creature 
less refined and delicate, so far as her physique goes, 
than anything that we Western people class under the 
name of woman. She has an awful ponderosity of frame, 
not pulpy, like the looser development of our few fat 
women, but massive with solid beef and streaky tallow ; 
so that (though struggling manfully against the idea) you 
inevitably think of her as made up of steaks and sirloins. 
When she walks, her advance is elephantine. When she 
sits down, it is on a great round space of her Maker's 
footstool, where she looks as if nothing could ever move 
her. She imposes* awe and respect, by the muchness of 
her personality, to such a degree that you probably credit 
her with far greater moral and intellectual force than she 
can fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim and stern, 
seldom positively forbidding, yet calmly terrible, not 
merely by its breadth and weight of feature, but because it 
seems to express so much well-founded self-reliance, such 
acquaintance with the world, its toils, troubles, and dan- 
gers, and such sturdy capacity for trampling down a foe. 
Without anything positively salient, or actively offensive, 
or, indeed, unjustly formidable to her neighbors, she has 
the effect of a seventy-four gun-ship in time of peace ; 



60 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

for, while you assure yourself that there is no real dan- 
ger, you cannot help thinking- how tremendous would be 
her onset, if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the 
effort to inflict any counter-injury. She certainly looks 
tenfold — nay, a hundred-fold — better able to take care of 
herself than our slender-framed and haggard womankind ; 
but I have not found reason to suppose that the English 
dowager of fifty has actually greater courage, fortitude, 
and strength of character than our women of similar age, 
or even a tougher physical endurance than they. Mor- 
ally, she is strong, I suspect, only in society, and in the 
common routine of social affairs, and would be found 
powerless and timid in any exceptional strait that might 
call for energy outside of the conventionalities amid 
which she has grown up. 

You can meet this figure in the street, and live, and 
even smile at the recollection. But conceive of her in a 
ballroom, with the bare, brawny arms that she invariably 
displays there, and all the other corresponding develop- 
ment, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a 
spectacle to howl at in such an over-blown cabbage-rose 
as this. 

Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be 
hidden the modest, slender, violet-nature of a girl, whom 
an alien mass of earthliness has unkindly overgrown; for 
an English maiden in her teens, though very seldom so 
pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, 
a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded 
leaves, and tender womanhood shielded by maidenly 
reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American 
girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable 
moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow 
into such an outrageously developed pecny as I have 
attempted to describe. I wonder whether a middle-aged 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 61 

husband ought to be considered as legally married to all 
the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of 
his bride, since he led her to the altar, and which make 
her so much more than he ever bargained tor ! Is it not 
a sounder view of the case, that the matrimonial bond 
cannot be held to include the three fourths of the wife 
that had no existence when the ceremony was performed ? 
And as a matter of conscience and good morals, ought 
not an English married pair to insist upon the celebration 
of a silver-wedding at the end of twenty-five years, in 
order to legalize and mutually appropriate that corporeal 
growth of which both parlies have individually come 
into possession since they were pronounced one flesh ? 
The chief enjoyment of my several visits to Leaming- 
ton lay in rural walks about the neighborhood, and in 
jaunts to places of note and interest, which are particu- 
larly abundant in that region. The high-roads are made 
pleasant to the traveller by a border of trees, and often 
afford him the hospitality of a wayside bench beneath a 
comfortable shade. But a fresher delight is to be found 
in the foot-paths, which go wandering away from stile to 
stiie, along hedges, and across broad fields, and through 
wooded parks, leading you to little hamlets of thatched 
cottages, ancient, solitary farm-houses, picturescpie old 
mills, streamlets, pools, and all those quiet, secret, unex- 
pected, yet strangely familiar features of English scenery 
that Tennyson shows us in his idyls and eclogues. These 
by-paths admit the wayfarer into the very heart of rural 
life, and yet do not burden him with a sense of intrusive- 
ness. He has a right to go whithersoever they lead 
him; for, with all their shaded privacy, they are as much 
the property of the public as the dusty high-road itself, 
and even by an older tenure. Their antiquity probably 
exceeds that of the Roman ways ; the footsteps of the 



62 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

aboriginal Britons first wore away the grass, and the 
natural flow of intercourse between village and village 
has kept the track bare ever since. An American farmer 
would plough across any such path, and obliterate it 
with his hills of potatoes and Indian corn ; but here it is 
protected by law, and still more by the sacredness that 
inevitably springs up, in this soil, along the well-defined 
footprints of centuries. Old associations are sure to be 
fragrant herbs in English nostrils ; we pull them up as 
weeds. 

I remember such a path, the access to which is from 
Lovers' Grove, a range of tall old oaks and elms on a 
high hill-top, whence there is a view of Warwick Castle, 
and a wide extent of landscape, beautiful, though be- 
dimmed with English mist. This particular foot-path, 
however, is not a remarkably good specimen of its kind, 
since it leads into no hollows and seclusions, and soon 
terminates in a high-road. It connects Leamington by a 
short cut with the small neighboring village of Lillington, 
a place which impresses an American observer with its 
many points of contrast to the rural aspects of his own 
country. The village consists chiefly of one row of con- 
tiguous dwellings, separated only by party-walls, but ill- 
matched among themselves, being of different heights, 
and apparently of various ages, though all are of an 
antiquity which we should call venerable. Some of the 
windows are leaden-framed lattices, opening on hinges. 
These houses arc mostly built of gray stone; but others, 
in the same range, are of brick, and one or two are in a 
very old fashion, —Elizabethan, or still older, — having 
a ponderous framework of oak, painted black, and filled 
in with plastered stone or bricks. Judging by the patches 
of repair, the oak seems to be the more durable part 
of the structure. Some of the roofs are covered with 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 63 

earthen tiles •, others (more decayed and poverty-stricken) 
with thatch, out of which sprouts a luxurious vegetation 
of grass, house-leeks, and yellow flowers. What es- 
pecially strikes an American is the lack of that insulated 
space, the intervening gardens, grass-plots, orchards, 
broad-spreading shade-trees, which occur between our 
own village-houses. These English dwellings have no 
such separate surroundings ; they all grow together, like 
the cells of a honeycomb. 

Beyond the first row of houses, and hidden from it by 
a turn of the road, there was another row (or block, as 
we should call it.) of small old cottages, stuck one against 
another, with their thatched roofs forming a single con- 
tiguity. These, I presume, were the habitations of the 
poorest order of rustic laborers ; and the narrow pre- 
cincts of each cottage, as well as the close neighborhood 
of the whole, gave the impression of a stifled, unhealthy 
atmosphere among the occupants. It seemed impossible 
that there should be a cleanly reserve, a proper self-respect 
among individuals, or a wholesome unfamiliarity between 
families where human life was crowded and massed into 
such intimate communities as these. Nevertheless, not 
to look beyond the outside, I never saw a prettier rural 
scene than was presented by this range of contiguous 
huts. For in front of the whole row was a luxuriant 
and well-trimmed hawthorn hedge, and belonging to each 
cottage was a little square of garden-ground, separated 
from its neighbors by a line of the same verdant fence. 
The gardens were chockfull, not of esculent vegetables, 
but of flowers, familiar ones, but very bright-colored, and 
shrubs of box, some of which were trimmed into artistic 
shapes ; and I remember, before one door, a representa- 
tion of Warwick Castle, made of oyster-shells. The 
cottagers evidently loved the little nests in which they 



Gdt LEAMINGTON SPA. 

dwelt, and did their best to make them beautiful, and 
succeeded more than tolerably well, — so kindly did na- 
ture help their humble efforts with its verdure, flowers, 
moss, lichens, and the green things that grew out of 
the thatch. Through some of the open doorways we 
saw plump children rolling about on the stone floors, and 
their mothers, by no means very pretty, but as happy- 
looking as mothers generally are ; and while we gazed at 
these domestic matters, an old woman rushed wildly out 
of one of the gates, upholding a shovel, on which she 
clanged and clattered with a key. At first we fancied 
that she intended an onslaught against ourselves, but soon 
discovered that a more dangerous enemy was abroad ; for 
the old lady's bees had swarmed, and the air was full of 
them, whizzing by our heads like bullets. 

Not far from these two rows of houses and cottages, a 
green lane, overshadowed with trees, turned aside from 
the main road, and tended towards a square, gray tower, 
the battlements of which were just high enough to be 
visible above the foliage. Wending our way thitherward, 
we found the very picture and ideal of a country church 
and churchyard. The tower seemed to be of Norman 
architecture, low, massive, and crowned with battlements. 
The body of the church was of very modest dimensions, 
and the eaves so low that I could touch them with my 
walking-stick. We looked into the windows and beheld 
the dim and quiet interior, a narrow space, but venerable 
with the consecration of many centuries, and keeping its 
sanctity as entire and inviolate as that of a vast cathedral. 
The nave was divided from the side aisles of the church 
by pointed arches resting on very sturdy pillars : it was 
good to see how solemnly they held themselves to their 
age-long task of supporting that lowly roof. There was 
a small organ, suited in size to the vaulted hollow, which 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 65 

it weekly filled with religious sound. On the opposite 
wall of the church, between two windows, was a mural 
tablet of white marble, with an inscription in black let- 
ters, — the only such memorial that I could discern, 
although many dead people doubtless lay beneath the 
floor, and had paved it with their ancient tombstones, as 
is customary in old English churches. There were no 
modern painted windows, flaring with raw colors, nor 
other gorgeous adornments, such as the present taste for 
mediaeval restoration often patches upon the decorous 
simplicity of the gray village-church. It is probably the 
worshipping-place of no more distinguished a congre- 
gation than the farmers and peasantry who inhabit the 
houses and cottages which I have just described. Had 
the lord of the manor been one of the parishioners, there 
would have been an eminent pew near the chancel, 
walled high about, curtained, and softly cushioned, 
warmed by a fireplace of its own, and distinguished by 
hereditary tablets and escutcheons on the enclosed stone 
pillar. 

A w^ell-trodden path led across the churchyard, and 
the gate being on the latch, we entered, and walked 
round among the graves and monuments. The latter 
were chiefly head-stones, none of which were very old, 
so far as was discoverable by the dates ; some, indeed, 
in so ancient a cemetery, were disagreeably new, with 
inscriptions glittering like sunshine in gold letters. The 
ground must have been dug over and over again, innu- 
merable times, until the soil is made up of what was once 
human clay, out of which have sprung successive crops 
of gravestones, that flourish their allotted time, and 
disappear, like the weeds and flowers in their briefer 
period. The English climate is very unfavorable to the 
endurance of memorials in the open air. Twenty years 



66 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

of it suffice to give as much antiquity of aspect, whether 
to tombstone or edifice, as a hundred years of our own 
drier atmosphere, — so soon do the drizzly rains and 
constant moisture corrode the surface of marble or free- 
stone. Sculptured edges loose their sharpness in a year 
or two ; yellow lichens overspread a beloved name, and 
obliterate it while it is yet fresh upon some survivor's 
heart. Time gnaws an English gravestone with won- 
derful appetite ; and when the inscription is quite illegi- 
ble, the sexton takes the useless slab away, and perhaps 
makes a hearthstone of it, and digs up the unripe bones 
which it ineffectually tried to memorialize, and gives the 
bed to another sleeper. In the Charter Street burial- 
ground at Salem, and in the old graveyard on the hill at 
Ipswich, I have seen more ancient gravestones, with 
legible inscriptions on them, than in any English church- 
yard. 

And yet this same ungenial climate, hostile as it gen- 
erally is to the long remembrance of departed people, has 
sometimes a lovely way of dealing with the records on 
certain monuments that lie horizontally in the open air. 
The rain falls into the deep incisions of the letters, and 
has scarcely time to be dried away before another shower 
sprinkles the flat stone again, and replenishes those little 
reservoirs. The unseen, mysterious seeds of mosses find 
their way into the lettered furrows, and are made to ger- 
minate by the continual moisture and watery sunshine of 
the English sky ; and by and by, in a year, or two years, 
or many years, behold the complete inscription — 

lere %mi\) tlje Ipoto, 

and all the rest of the tender falsehood — beautifully 
embossed in raised letters of living green, a bas-relief 



\ 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 67 

of velvet moss on the marble slab ! It becomes more 
legible, under the skyey influences, after the world has 
forgotten the deceased, than when it was fresh from the 
stone-cutter's hands. It outlives the grief of friends. I 
first saw an example of this in Bebbington churchyard, 
in Cheshire, and thought that Nature must needs have 
had a special tenderness for the person (no noted man, 
however, in the world's history) so long ago laid beneath 
that stone, since she took such wonderful pains to " keep 
his memory green." Perhaps the proverbial phrase just 
quoted may have had its origin in the natural phenom- 
enon here described. 

While we rested ourselves on a horizontal monument, 
which was elevated just high enough to be a convenient 
seat, I observed that one of the gravestones lay very close 
to the church, — so close that the droppings of the eaves 
would fall upon it. It seemed as if the inmate of that 
grave had desired to creep under the church-wall. On 
closer inspection, we found an almost illegible epitapli 
on the stone, and with difficulty made out this forlorn 
verse : — 

" Poorly lived, 

And poorly died, 

Poorly buried, 

And no one cried." 

It would be hard to compress the story of a cold anil 
luckless life, death, and burial into fewer words, or more 
impressive ones ; at least, we found them impressive, 
perhaps because we had to re-create the inscription by 
scraping away the lichens from the faintly traced letters. 
The grave was on the shady and damp side of the church, 
endwise towards it, the head-stone being within about 
three feet of the foundation-wall; so that, unless the 
poor man was a dwarf, he must have been doubled up to 



68 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

fit him into his final resting-place. No wonder that his 
epitaph murmured against so poor a burial as this ! His 
name, as well as I could make it out, was Treeo, — -John 
Treeo, I think, — and he died in 1S10, at the age of sev- 
enty-four. The gravestone is so overgrown with grass 
and weeds, so covered with unsightly lichens, and so 
crumbly with time and foul weather, that it is question- 
able whether anybody will ever be at the trouble of de- 
ciphering it again. But there is a quaint and sad kind 
of enjoyment in defeating (to such slight degree as my 
pen may do it) the probabilities of oblivion for poor John 
Treeo, and asking a little sympathy for him, half a cen- 
tury after his death, and making him better and more 
widely known, at least, than any other slumberer in Lil- 
lington churchyard: he having been, as appearances go, 
the outcast of them all. 

You find similar old churches and villages in all the 
neighboring country, at the distance of every two or three 
miles ; and I describe them, not as being rare, but be- 
cause they are so common and characteristic. The vil- 
lage of Whitnash, within twenty minutes' walk of Leam- 
ington, looks as secluded, as rural, and as little disturbed 
by the fashions of to-day, as if Dr. Jephson had never 
developed all those Parades and Crescents out of his 
magic well. I used to wonder whether the inhabitants 
had ever yet heard of railways, or, at their slow rate of 
progress, had even reached the epoch of stage-coaches. 
As you approach the village, while it is yet unseen, you 
observe a tall, overshadowing canopy of elm-tree tops, 
beneath which you almost hesitate to follow the public 
road, on account of the remoteness that seems to exist 
between the precincts of this old-world community and 
the thronged modern street out of which you have so 
recently emerged. Venturing onward, however, you 



i 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 69 

soon find yourself in the heart of Whitnash, and see 
an irregular ring of ancient rustic dwellings surrounding 
the village -green, on one side of which stands the church, 
with its square Norman tower and battlements, while 
close adjoining is the vicarage, made picturesque by 
peaks and gables. At first glimpse, none of the houses 
appear to be less than two or three centuries old, and 
they are of the ancient, wooden-framed fashion, with 
thatched roofs, which give them the air of birds' nests, 
thereby assimilating them closely to the simplicity of 
nature. 

The church-tower is mossy and much gnawed by time; 
it has narrow loopholes up and down its front and sides, 
and an arched window over the low portal, set with 
small panes of glass, cracked, dim, and irregular, through 
which a bygone age is peeping out into the daylight. Some 
of those old, grotesque faces, called gargoyles, are seen 
on the projections of the architecture. The churchyard 
is very small, and is encompassed by a gray stone fence 
that looks as ancient as the church itself. In front of the 
tower, on the village-green, is a yew-tree of incalculable 
age, with a vast circumference of trunk, but a very scanty 
head of foliage ; thought its boughs still keep some of the 
vitality which perhaps was in its early prime when the 
Saxon invaders founded Whitnash. A thousand years is 
no extraordinary antiquity in the lifetime of a yew. We 
were pleasantly startled, however, by discovering an ex- 
uberance of more youthful life than w r e had thought 
possible in so old a tree ; for the faces of two children 
laughed at us out of an opening in the trunk, which had 
become hollow with long decay. On one side of the 
yew stood a framework of worm-eaten timber, the use 
and meaning of which puzzled me exceedingly, till I 
made it out to be the village-stocks ; a public institution 



70 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

that, in its day, had doubtless hampered many a pair of 
shank-bones, now crumbling in the adjacent churchyard. 
It is not to be supposed, however, that this old-fashioned 
mode of punishment is still in vogue among the good 
people of Whitnash. The vicar of the parish has anti- 
quarian propensities, and had probably dragged the stocks 
out of some dusty hiding-place, and set them up on their 
former site as a curiosity. 

I disquiet myself in vain with the effort to hit upon 
some characteristic feature, or assemblage of features, that 
shall convey to the reader the influence of hoar antiquity 
lingering into the present daylight, as I so often felt it in 
these old English scenes. It is only an American who can 
feel it ; and even he begins to find himself growing in- 
sensible to its effect, after a long residence in England. 
But while you are still new in the old country, it thrills 
you with strange emotion to think that this little church 
of Whitnash, humble as it seems, stood for ages under 
the Catholic faith, and has not materially changed since 
Wickcliffe's days, and that it looked as gray as now in 
Bloody Mary's time, and that Cromwell's troopers broke 
off the stone noses of those same gargoyles that are now 
grinning in your face. So, too, with the immemorial 
yew-tree : you see its great roots grasping hold of the 
earth like gigantic claws, clinging so sturdily that no effort 
of time can wrench them away ; and there being life in 
the old tree, you feel all the more as if a contemporary 
witness were telling you of the things that have been. 
It has lived among men, and been a familiar object to 
them, and seen them brought to be christened and mar- 
ried and buried in the neighboring church and church- 
yard, through so many centuries, that it knows all about 
our race, so far as fifty generations of the Whitnash 
people can supply such knowledge. 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 71 

And, after all, what a weary life it must have been for 
the old tree! Tedious beyond imagination! Such, I 
think, is the final impression on the mind of an American 
visitor, when his delight at finding something permanent-, 
begins to yield to his Western love of change, and he 
becomes, sensible of the heavy air of a spot where the 
forefathers and foremothers have grown up together, in- 
termarried, and died, through a long succession of lives, 
without any intermixture of new elements, till family 
features and character are all run in the same inevitable 
mould. Life is there fossilized in its greenest leaf, The 
man who died yesterday or ever so long ago walks the 
village-street to day, and chooses the same wife that he 
married a hundred years since, and must be buried again 
to-morrow under the same kindred dust that has already 
covered him half a score of times. The stone threshold 
of his cottage is worn away with his hobnailed footsteps, 
shuffling over it from the reign of the first Plantagenet to 
that of Victoria. Better than this is the lot of our rest- 
less countrymen, whose modern instinct bids them tend 
always towards " fresh woods and pastures new." liather 
than such monotony of sluggish ages, loitering on a vil- 
lage-green, toiling in hereditary fields, listening to the 
parson's drone lengthened through centuries in the gray 
Norman church, let us welcome whatever change may 
come, — change of place, social customs, political insti- 
tutions, modes of worship, — trusting, that, if all present 
things shall vanish, they will but make room for better 
systems, and for a higher type of man to clothe his life 
in them, and to fling them off in turn. 

Nevertheless, while an American willingly accepts 
growth and change as the law of his own national and 
private existence, he has a singular tenderness for the 
stone-incrusted institutions of the mother-country. The 



72 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

reason may be (though I should prefer a more generous 
explanation) that he recognizes the tendency of these 
hardened forms to stiffen her joints and fetter her ankles, 
in the race and rivalry of improvement. I hated to see 
so much as a twig of ivy wrenched away from an old wall 
in England. Yet change is at work, even in such a vil- 
lage as Whitnash. At a subsequent visit, looking more 
critically at the irregular circle of dwellings that sur- 
round the yew-tree and confront the church, I perceived 
that some of the houses must have been built within no 
long time, although the thatch, the quaint gables, and 
the old oaken framework of the others diffused an air of 
antiquity over the whole assemblage. The church itself 
was undergoing repair and restoration, which is but 
another name for change. Masons were making patch- 
work on the front of the tower, and were sawing a slab 
of stone and piling up bricks to strengthen the side -wall, 
or possibly to enlarge the ancient edifice by an additional 
aisle. Moreover, they had dug an immense pit in the 
churchyard, long and broad, and fifteen feet deep, two 
thirds of which profundity were discolored by human 
decay, and mixed up with crumbly bones. What this 
excavation was intended for I could nowise imagine, 
unless it were the very pit in which Longfellow bids the 
" Dead Past bury its Dead," and "Whitnash, of all places 
in the world, were going to avail itself of our poet's sug- 
gestion. If so, it must needs be confessed that many 
picturesque and delightful things would be thrown into 
the hole, and covered out of sight forever. 

The article which I am writing has taken its own 
course, and occupied itself almost wholly with country 
churches; whereas I had purposed to attempt a descrip- 
tion of some of the many old towns — Warwick, Coven- 
try, Kcnilworth, Stratford-on-Avon — which lie within 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 73 

an easy scope of Leamington. And still another church 
presents itself to my remembrance. It is that of Hatton, 
on which I stumbled in the course of a forenoon's ramble, 
and paused a little while to look at it for the sake of old 
Dr. Parr, who was once its vicar. Hatton, so far as I 
could discover, has no public-house, no shop, no con- 
tiguity of roofs (as in most English villages, however 
small), but is merely an ancient neighborhood of farm- 
houses, spacious, and standing wide apart, each within 
its own precincts, and offering a most comfortable aspect 
of orchards, harvest-fields, barns, stacks, and all manner 
of rural plenty. It seemed to be a community of old 
settlers, among whom everything had been going on 
prosperously since an epoch beyond the memory of man ; 
and they kept a certain privacy among themselves, and 
dwelt on a cross-road, at the entrance of which was a 
barred gate, hospitably open, but still impressing me 
with a sense of scarcely warrantable intrusion. After 
all, in some shady nook of those gentle Warwickshire 
slopes there may have been a denser and more popirous 
settlement, styled Hatton, which I never reached. 

Emerging from the by-road, and entering upon one 
that crossed it at right angles and led to Warwick, I 
espied the church of Dr. Parr. Like the others which 
I have described, it had a low stone tower, square, and 
battlemented at its summit : for all these little churches 
seem to have been built on the same model, and nearly 
at the same measurement, and have even a greater fam- 
ily-likeness than the cathedrals. As I approached, the 
bell of the tower (a remarkably deep-toned bell, con- 
sidering how small it was) flung its voice abroad, and 
told me that it was noon. The church stands among its 
graves, a little removed from the wayside, quite apart 
from any collection of houses, and with no signs of a 
4 



74 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

vicarage ; it is a good deal shadowed by trees, and not 
wholly destitute of ivy. The body of the edifice, unfor- 
tunately (and it is an outrage which the English church- 
wardens are fond of perpetrating), has been newly covered 
with a yellowish plaster or wash, so as quite to destroy 
the aspect of antiquity, except upon the tower, which 
wears the dark gray hue of many centuries. The chan- 
cel-window is painted with a representation of Christ 
upon the Cross, and all the other windows are full of 
painted or stained glass, but none of it ancient, nor (if it 
be fair to judge from without of what ought to be seen 
within) possessing any of the tender glory that should be 
the inheritance of this branch of Art, revived from me- 
diaeval times. I stepped over the graves, and peeped in at 
two or three of the windows, and saw the snug interior 
of the church glimmering through the many-colored 
panes, like a show of commonplace objects under the fan- 
tastic influence of a dream : for the floor was covered with 
modern pews, very like what we may see in a New Eng- 
land meeting-house, though, I think, a little more favor- 
able than those would be to the quiet slumbers of the 
Hatton farmers and their families. Those who slept 
under Dr. Parr's preaching now prolong their nap, I 
suppose, in the churchyard round about, and can scarcely 
have drawn much spiritual benefit from any truths that 
he contrived to tell them in their lifetime. It struck me 
as a rare example (even where examples are numerous) 
of a man utterly misplaced, that this enormous scholar, 
great in the classic tongues, and inevitably converting 
his own simplest vernacular into a learned language, 
should have been sot up in this homely pulpit, and or- 
dained to preach salvation to a rustic audience, to whom 
it is difficult to imagine how he could ever have spoken 
one available word. 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 75 

Almost always, in visiting such scenes as I have been 
attempting to describe, I had a singular sense of having 
been there before. The ivy-grown English churches 
(even that of Bebbington, the first that I beheld) were 
quite as familiar to me, when fresh from home, as the 
old wooden meeting-house in Salem, which used, on win- 
try Sabbaths, to be the frozen purgatory of my childhood. 
This was a bewildering, yet very delightful emotion flut- 
tering about me like a faint summer wind, and filling my 
imagination with a thousand half-remembrances, which 
looked as vivid as sunshine, at a side-glance, but faded 
quite away whenever I attempted to grasp and define 
them. Of course, the explanation of the mystery was, 
that history, poetry, and fiction, books of travel, and the 
talk of tourists, had given me pretty accurate precon- 
ceptions of the common objects of English scenery, and 
these, being long ago vivified by a youthful fancy, had 
insensibly taken their places among the images of things 
actually seen. Yet the illusion was often so powerful, 
that I almost doubted whether such airy remembrances 
might not be a sort of innate idea, the print of a recollec- 
tion in some ancestral mind, transmitted, with fainter and 
fainter impress through several descents, to my own. I 
felt, indeed, like the stalwart progenitor in person, return- 
ing to the hereditary haunts after more than two hundred 
years, and finding the church, the hall, the farm-house, 
the cottage, hardly changed during his long absence, — 
the same shady by-paths and hedge-lanes, the same veiled 
sky, and green lustre of the lawns and fields, — while his 
own affinities for these things, a little obscured by disuse, 
were reviving at every step. 

An American is not very apt to love the English peo- 
ple, as a whole, on whatever length of acquaintance. I 
fancy that they would value our regard, and even recip- 



76 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

rocate it in their ungracious way, if we could give it to 
them in spite of all rebuffs ; but they are beset by a curi- 
ous and inevitable infelicity, which compels them, as it 
were, to keep up what they seem to consider a whole- 
some bitterness of feeling between themselves and all 
other nationalities, especially that of America. They 
will never confess it; nevertheless, it is as essential a 
tonic to them as their bitter ale. Therefore, — and pos- 
sibly, too, from a similar narrowness in his own charac- 
ter, — an American seldom feels quite as if he were at 
home among the English people. If he do so, he has 
ceased to be an American. But it requires no long resi- 
dence to make him love their island, and appreciate it as 
thoroughly as they themselves do. For my part, I used 
to wish that we could annex it, transferring their thirty 
millions of inhabitants to some convenient wilderness in 
the great West, and putting half or a quarter as many of 
ourselves into their places. The change would be bene- 
ficial to both parties. We, in our dry atmosphere, are 
getting too nervous, haggard, dyspeptic, extenuated, un- 
substantial, theoretic, and need to be made grosser. John 
Bull, on the other hand, has grown bulbous, long-bodied, 
short-legged, heavy-wit ted, material, and, in a word, too 
intensely English. In a few more centuries he will be 
the earthliest creature that ever the earth saw. Hereto- 
fore Providence has obviated such a result by timely in- 
termixtures of alien races with the old English stock ; so 
that each successive conquest of England has proved a 
victory by the revivification and improvement of its na- 
tive manhood. Cannot America and England hit upon 
some scheme to secure even greater advantages to both 
nations ? 



ABOUT WARWICK. 




ETWEEN bright, new Leamington, the growth 
of the present century, and rusty Warwick, 
founded by King Cymbeline in the twilight 
ages, a thousand years before the mediaeval darkness, 
there are two roads, either of which may be measured by 
a sober-paced pedestrian in less than half an hour. 

One of these avenues flows out of the midst of the 
smart parades and crescents of the former town, — along 
by hedges and beneath the shadow of great elms, past 
stuccoed Elizabethan villas and wayside alehouses, and 
through a hamlet of modern aspect, — and runs straight 
into the principal thoroughfare of Warwick. The battle- 
mented turrets of the castle, embowered half-way up in 
foliage, and the tall, slender tower of St. Mary's Church, 
rising from among clustered roofs, have been visible 
almost from the commencement of the walk. Near the 
entrance of the town stands St. John's School-House, a 
picturesque old edifice of stone, with four peaked gables 
in a row, alternately plain and ornamented, and wide, 
projecting windows, and a spacious and venerable porch, 
all overgrown with moss and ivy, and shut in from the 
world by a high stone fence, not less mossy than the 
gabled front. There is an iron gate, through the rusty 
open-work of which you see a grassy lawn, and almost 



78 ABOUT WARWICK. 

expect to meet the shy, curious eyes of the little boys of 
past generations, peeping forth from their infantile antiq- 
uity into the strangeness of our present life. I find a 
peculiar charm in these long-established English schools, 
where the school-boy of to-day sits side by side, as it 
were, with his great-grandsire, on the same old benches, 
and often, I believe, thumbs a later, but unimproved edi- 
tion of the same old grammar or arithmetic. The new- 
fangled notions of a Yankee school-committee would 
madden many a pedagogue, and shake down the roof of 
many a time-honored seat of learning, in the mother- 
country. 

At this point, however, we will turn back, in order to 
follow up the other road from Leamington, which was 
the one that I loved best to take. It pursues a straight 
and level course, bordered by wide gravel-walks and 
overhung by the frequent elm, with here a cottage and 
there a villa, on one side a wooded plantation, and on the 
other a rich field of grass or grain, until, turning at right 
angles, it brings you to an arched bridge over the Avon. 
Its parapet is a balustrade carved out of freestone, into 
the soft substance of which a multitude of persons have 
engraved their names or initials, many of them now illegi- 
ble, while others, more deeply cut, are illuminated with 
fresh green moss. These tokens indicate a famous spot ; 
and casting our eyes along the smooth gleam and shadow 
of the quiet stream, through a vista of willows that droop 
on either side into the water, we behold the gray magnifi- 
cence of Warwick Castle, uplifting itself among stately 
trees, and rearing its turrets high above their loftiest 
brandies. We can scarcely think the scene real, so com- 
pletely do those machicolated towers, the long line of 
battlements, the massive buttresses, the high-windowed 
walls, shape out our indistinct ideas of the antique time. 



ABOUT WARWICK. 79 

It might rather seem as if the sleepy river (being Shake- 
speare's Avon, and often, no doubt, the mirror of his 
gorgeous visions) were dreaming now of a lordly resi- 
dence that stood here many centuries ago ; and this fan- 
tasy is strengthened, when you observe that the image in 
the tranquil water has all the distinctness of the actual 
structure. Either might be the reflection of the other. 
Wherever Time has gnawed one of the stones, you see 
the mark of his tooth just as plainly in the sunken reflec- 
tion. Each is so perfect, that the upper vision seems a 
castle in the air, and the lower one an old stronghold of 
feudalism, miraculously kept from decay in an enchanted 
river. 

A ruinous and ivy-grown bridge, that projects from the 
bank a little on the hither side of the castle, has the effect 
of making the scene appear more entirely apart from the 
every-day world, for it ends abruptly in the middle of 
the stream, — -so that, if a cavalcade of the knights and 
ladies of romance should issue from the old walls, they 
could never tread on earthly ground, any more than we, 
approaching from the side of modern realism, can over- 
leap the gulf between our domain and theirs. Yet, if 
we seek to disenchant ourselves, it may readily be done. 
Crossing the bridge on which we stand, and passing a 
little farther on, we come to the entrance of the castle, 
abutting on the highway, and hospitably open at certain 
hours to all curious pilgrims who choose to disburse half 
a crown or so toward 1 he support of the earl's domes- 
tics. The sight of that long series of historic rooms, full 
of such splendors and rarities as a great English family 
necessarily gathers about itself, in its hereditary abode, 
and in the lapse of ages, is well worth the money, or ten 
times as much, if indeed the value of the spectacle could 
be reckoned in money's-worth. But after the attendant 



80 ABOUT WARWICK. 

has hurried you from end to end of the edifice, repeating 
a guide-book by rote, and exorcising each successive hall 
of its poetic glamour and witchcraft by the mere tone in 
which he talks about it, you will make the doleful discov- 
ery that Warwick Castle has ceased to be a dream. It 
is better, methinks, to linger on the bridge, gazing at 
Caesar's Tower and Guy's Tower in the dim English sun- 
shine above, and in the placid Avon below, and still 
keep them as thoughts in your own mind, than climb to 
their summits, or touch even a stone of their actual sub- 
stance. They will have all the more reality for you, as 
stalwart relics of immemorial time, if you are reverent 
enough to leave them in the intangible sanctity of a 
poetic vision. 

From the bridge over the Avon, the road passes in front 
of the castle-gate, and soon enters the principal street 
of Warwick, a little beyond St. John's School-House, al- 
ready described. Chester itself, most antique of English 
towns, can hardly show quainter architectural shapes than 
many of the buildings that border this street. They are 
mostly of the timber-and-plastcr kind, with bowed and 
decrepit ridge-poles, and a whole chronology of various 
patchwork in their walls; their low-browed doorways 
open upon a sunken floor ; their projecting stories peep, 
as it were, over one another's shoulders, and rise into 
a multiplicity of peaked gables ; they have curious win- 
dows, breaking out irregularly all over the house, some 
even in the roof, set in their own little peaks, opening 
lattice-wise, and furnished with twenty small panes of 
lozenge-shaped glass. The architecture of these edifices 
(a visible oaken framework, showing the whole skeleton 
of the house, — as if a man's bones should be arranged 
on his outside, and his flesh seen through the interstices) 
is often imitated by modern builders, and with sufficiently 



ABOUT WARWICK. 81 

picturesque effect. The objection is, that such houses, 
like all imitations of bygone styles, have an air of affec- 
tation ; they do not seem to be built in earnest ; they 
are no better than playthings, or overgrown baby-houses, 
in which nobody should be expected to encounter the 
serious realities of either birth or death. Besides, origi- 
nating nothing, we leave no fashions for another age to 
copy, when we ourselves shall have grown antique. 

Old as it looks, all this portion of Warwick has over- 
brimmed, as it were, from the original settlement, being 
outside of the ancient wall. The street soon runs under 
an arched gateway, with a church or some other vener- 
able structure above it, and admits us into the heart of 
the town. At one of my first visits, I witnessed a mili- 
tary display. A regiment of "Warwickshire militia, prob- 
ably commanded by the Earl, was going through its drill 
in the market-place; and on the collar of one of the 
officers was embroidered the Bear and Ragged Staff, 
which has been the cognizance of the Warwick earldom 
from time immemorial. The soldiers were sturdy young 
men, with the simple, stolid, yet kindly, faces of English 
rustics, looking exceedingly well in a body, but slouching 
into a yeoman-like carriage and appearance the moment 
they were dismissed from drill. Squads of them were 
distributed everywhere about the streets, and sentinels 
were posted at various points ; and I saw a sergeant, 
with a great key in his hand (big enough to have been 
the key of the castle's main entrance when the gate w r as 
thickest and heaviest), apparently setting a guard. Thus, 
centuries after feudal times are past, we find warriors 
still gathering under the old castle-walls, and commanded 
by a feudal lord, just as in the days of the King-Maker, 
who, no doubt, often mustered his retainers in the same 
market-place where I beheld this modern regiment. 
4* f 



82 ABOUT WARWICK. 

The interior of the town wears a less old-fashioned 
aspect than the suburbs through which we approach it ; 
and the High Street has shops with modern plate-glass, 
and buildings with stuccoed fronts, exhibiting as few pro- 
jections to hang a thought or sentiment upon as if an 
architect of to-day had planned them. And, indeed, so 
far as their surface goes, they are perhaps new enough 
to stand unabashed in an American street ; but behind 
these renovated faces, with their monotonous lack of ex- 
pression, there is probably the substance of the same old 
town that wore a Gothic exterior in the Middle Ages. 
The street is an emblem of England itself. What seems 
new in it is chiefly a skilful and fortunate adaptation of 
what such a people as ourselves would destroy. The 
new things are based and supported on sturdy old things, 
and derive a massive strength from their deep and im- 
memorial foundations, though with such limitations and 
impediments as only an Englishman could endure. But 
he likes to feel the weight of all the past upon his back ; 
and, moreover, the antiquity that overburdens him has 
taken root in his being, and has grown to be rather a 
hump than a pack, so that there is no getting rid of it 
without tearing his whole structure to pieces. In my 
judgment, as he appears to be sufficiently comfortable 
under the mouldy accretion, he had better stumble on 
with it as long as he can. He presents a spectacle 
which is by no means without its charm for a disinterested 
and unencumbered observer. 

When the old edifice, or the antiquated custom or 
institution, appears in its pristine form, without any 
attempt at intermarrying it with modern fashions, an 
American cannot but admire the picturesque effect pro- 
duced by the sudden cropping up of an apparently dead- 
and-buried state of society into the actual present, of 



ABOUT WARWICK. 83 

which lie is himself a part. We need not go far in 
Warwick without encountering an instance of the kind. 
Proceeding westward through the town, we find our- 
selves confronted by a huge mass of natural rock, hewn 
into something like architectural shape, and penetrated 
by a vaulted passage, which may well have been one of 
King Cymbeline's original gateways; and on the top of 
the rock, over the archway, sits a small old church, 
communicating with an ancient edifice, or assemblage of 
edifices, that look down from a similar elevation on the 
side of the street. A range of trees half hides the latter 
establishment from the sun. It presents a curious and 
venerable specimen of the timber-and-plaster style of 
building, in which some of the finest old houses in Eng- 
land are constructed; the front projects into porticos 
and vestibules, and rises into many gables, some in a 
row, and others crowning semi-detached portions of the 
structure; the windows mostly open on hinges, but 
show a delightful irregularity of shape and position ; a 
multiplicity of chimneys break through the roof at their 
own will, or, at least, without any settled purpose of the 
architect. The whole affair looks very old, — so old 
indeed that the front bulges forth, as if the timber frame- 
work were a little weary, at last, of standing erect so 
long; but the state of repair is so perfect, and there is 
such an indescribable aspect of continuous vitality within 
the system of this aged house, that you feel confident 
that there may be safe shelter yet, and perhaps for cen- 
turies to come, under its time-honored roof. And on 
a bench, sluggishly enjoying the sunshine, and looking 
into the street of Warwick as from a life apart, a few 
old men are generally to be seen, wrapped in long cloaks, 
on which you may detect the glistening of a silver badge 
representing the Bear and Ragged Staff. These deco- 



84 ABOUT WARWICK. 

rated worthies are some of the twelve brethren of Leices- 
ter's Hospital, — a community which subsists to-day 
under the identical modes that were established for it in 
the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and of course retains many 
features of a social life that has vanished almost every- 
where else. 

The edifice itself dates from a much older period than 
the charitable institution of which it is now the home. 
It was the seat of a religious fraternity far back in the 
Middle Ages, and continued so till Hemy VIII. turned 
all the priesthood of England out of doors, and put the 
most unscrupulous of his favorites into their vacant 
abodes. In many instances, the old monks had chosen 
the sites of their domiciles so well, and built them on 
such a broad system of beauty and convenience, that 
their lay-occupants found it easy to convert them into 
stately and comfortable homes ; and as such they still 
exist, with something of the antique reverence lingering 
about them. The structure now before us seems to have 
been first granted to Sir Nicholas Lestrange, who per- 
haps intended, like other men, to establish his household 
gods in the niches whence he had thrown down the im- 
ages of saints, and to lay his hearth where an altar had 
stood. But there was probably a natural reluctance in 
those days (when Catholicism, so lately repudiated, must 
needs have retained an influence over all but the most 
obdurate characters) to bring one's hopes of domestic 
prosperity and a fortunate lineage into direct hostility 
with the awful claims of the ancient religion. At all 
events, there is still a superstitious idea, betwixt a fan- 
tasy and a belief, that the possession of former Church- 
property has drawn a curse along with it, not only among 
the posterity of those to whom it was originally granted, 
bat wherever it has subsequently been transferred, even 



ABOUT WARWICK. 85 

if honestly bought and paid for. There are families, now 
inhabiting some of the beautiful old abbeys, who appear 
to indulge a species of pride in recording the strange 
deaths and ugly shapes of misfortune that have occurred 
among their predecessors, and may be supposed likely 
to dog their own pathway down the ages of futurity. 
Whether Sir Nicholas Lestrange, in the beef-eating 
days of Old Harry and Elizabeth, was a nervous man, 
and subject to apprehensions of this kind, I cannot tell ; 
but it is certain that he speedily rid himself of the spoils 
of the Church, and that, within twenty years afterwards, 
the edifice became the property of the famous Dudley, 
Earl of Leicester, brother of the Earl of Warwick. He 
devoted the ancient religious precinct to a charitable use, 
endowing it with an ample revenue, and making it the 
perpetual home of twelve poor, honest, and war-broken 
soldiers, mostly his own retainers, and natives either of 
Warwickshire or Gloucestershire. These veterans, or 
others wonderfully like them, still occupy their monkish 
dormitories and haunt the time-darkened corridors and 
galleries of the hospital, leading a life of old-fashioned 
comfort, wearing the old-fashioned cloaks, and burnish- 
ing the identical silver badges which the Earl of Leices- 
ter gave to the original twelve. He is said to have been 
a bad man in his day ; but he has succeeded in pro- 
longing one good deed into what was to him a distant 
future. 

On the projecting story, over the arched entrance, there 
is the date, 1571, and several coats-of-arms, either the 
Earl's or those of his kindred, and immediately above the 
doorway a stone sculpture of the Bear and Ragged 
Staff. 

Passing through the arch, we find ourselves in a quad- 
rangle, or enclosed court, such as always formed the cen- 



86 ABOUT WARWICK. 

tral part of a great family residence in Queen Elizabeth's 
time, and earlier. There can hardly he a more perfect 
specimen of snch an establishment than Leicester's Hos- 
pital. The quadrangle is a sort of sky-roofed hall, to 
which there is convenient access from all parts of the 
house. The four inner fronts, with their high, steep 
roofs and sharp gables, look into it from antique windows, 
and through open corridors and galleries along the sides ; 
and there seems to be a richer display of architectural 
devices and ornaments, quainter carvings in oak, and 
more fantastic shapes of the timber framework, than on 
the side toward the street. On the wall opposite the 
arched entrance are the following inscriptions, compris- 
ing such moral rules, I presume, as ware deemed most 
essential for the daily observance of the community : 

"Donor all pen" — " /ear (go* " — " Honor 
t\)t Sting" — "%om tl)e |irotI)erI)oob " ; and again, 

as if this latter injunction needed emphasis and repetition 
among a household of aged people soured with the hard 
fortune of their previous lives, — "lie kinMtt affec- 
tioitet) one to another." One sentence, over a door 
communicating with the Master's side of the house, is 
addressed to that dignitary, — " ||e tl)at ntletl) OOCr 
men mtt£t bt just." All these are charactered in old 
English letters, and form part of the elaborate ornamen- 
tation of the house. Everywhere — on the walls, over 
windows and doors, and at all points where there is room 
to place them — appear escutcheons of arms, cognizances, 
and crests, emblazoned in their proper colors, and illumi- 
nating the ancient quadrangle with their splendor. One 
of these devices is a large image of a porcupine on an 
heraldic wreath, being the crest of the Lords de Lisle. 
But especially is the cognizance of the Bear and Ragged 
Staff repeated over and over, and over again and again, 



\ 



ABOUT WARWICK. 87 

in a great variety of attitudes, at full-length, and half- 
length, in paint and in oaken sculpture, in bas-relief and 
rounded image. The founder of the hospital was certainly 
disposed to reckon his own beneficence as among the 
hereditary glories of his race ; and had he lived and died a 
half-century earlier, he would have kept up an old Catho- 
lic custom by enjoining the twelve bedesmen to pray for 
the welfare of his soul. 

At my first visit, some of the brethren were seated on 
the bench outside of the edifice, looking down into the 
street ; but they did not vouchsafe me a word, and seemed 
so estranged from modern life, so enveloped in antique 
customs and old-fashioned cloaks, that to converse with 
them would have been like shouting across the gulf be- 
tween our age and Queen Elizabeth's. So I passed into 
the quadrangle, and found it quite solitary, except that a 
plain and neat old woman happened to be crossing it, 
with an aspect of business and carefulness that bespoke 
her a woman of this world, and not merely a shadow of the 
past. Asking her if I could come in, she answered very 
readily and civilly that I might, and said that I was free 
to look about me, hinting a hope, however, that I would 
not open the private doors of the brotherhood, as soma 
visitors were in the habit of doing. Under her guidance, 
I went into what was formerly the great hall of the estab- 
lishment, where King James I. had once been feasted by 
an Earl of Warwick, as is commemorated by an inscrip- 
tion on the cobwebbed and dingy wall. It is a very spa- 
cious and barn-like apartment, with a brick floor, and a 
vaulted roof, the rafters of which are oaken beams, won- 
derfully carved, but hardly visible in the duskiness that 
broods aloft. The hall may have made a splendcd ap- 
pearance, when it was decorated with rich tapestry, and 
illuminated with chandeliers, cressets, and torches glis- 



88 ABOUT WARWICK. 

telling upon silver dishes, where King James sat at sup- 
per among his brilliantly dressed nobles; but it has coma 
to base uses in these latter days, — being improved, in 
Yankee phrase, as a brewery and wash-room, and as a 
cellar for the brethren's separate allotments of coal. 

The old lady here left me to myself, and I returned into 
the quadrangle. It was very quiet, very handsome, in 
its own obsolete style, and must be an exceedingly com- 
fortable place for the old people to lounge in, when the 
inclement winds render it inexpedient to walk abroad. 
There are shrubs against the wall, on one side; and on 
another is a cloistered walk, adorned with stags' heads 
and antlers, and running beneath a covered gallery, up to 
which ascends a balustraded staircase. In the portion of 
the edifice opposite the entrance-arch are the apartments 
of the Master; and looking into the window (as the old 
woman, at no request of mine, had specially informed me 
that I might), I saw a low, but vastly comfortable parlor, 
very handsomely furnished, and altogether a luxurious 
place. It had a fireplace with an immense arch, the an- 
tique breadth of which extended almost from wall to wall 
of the room, though now fitted up in such a way, that 
the modern coal-grate looked very diminutive in the 
midst. Gazing into this pleasant interior, it seemed to 
me, that, among these venerable surroundings, availing 
himself of whatever was good in former things, and 
eking out their imperfection with the results of modern 
ingenuity, the Master might lead a not unenviable life. 
On the cloistered side of the quadrangle, where the dirk 
oak panels made the enclosed space dusky, I beheld a 
curtained window reddened by a great blaze from within, 
and heard the bubbling and squeaking of something — 
doubt] ss very nice and succulent — that was being 
cooked at the kitchen-fire. I think, indeed, that a whiff 



\ 



ABOUT WARWICK. 89 

or two of tlie savory fragrance reached my nostrils ; at 
all events, the impression grew upon me that Leicester's 
Hospital is one of the j oiliest old domiciles in England. 

I was about to depart, when another old woman, very 
plainly dressed, but fat, comfortable, and with a cheerful 
twinkle in her eyes, came in through the arch, and looked 
curiously at me. This repeated apparition of the gentle 
sex (though by no means under its loveliest guise) had 
still an agreeable effect in modifying my ideas of an 
institution which I had supposed to be of a stern and 
monastic character. She asked whether I wished to see 
the hospital, and said that the porter, whose office it was 
to attend to visitors, was dead, and would be buried that 
very day, so that the whole establishment could not con- 
veniently be shown me. She kindly invited me, how- 
ever, to visit the apartment occupied by her husband and 
herself; so I followed her up the antique staircase, along 
the gallery, and into a small, oak-panelled parlor, where 
sat an old man in a long blue garment, who arose and 
saluted me with much courtesy. He seemed a very quiet 
person, and yet had a look of travel and adventure, and 
gray experience, such as I could have fancied in a palmer 
of ancient times, who might likewise have worn a similar 
costume. The little room was carpeted and neatly fur- 
nished; a portrait of its occupant was hanging on the 
wall ; and on a table were two swords crossed, — one, 
probably, his own battle-weapon, and the other, which I 
drew half out of the scabbard, had an inscription on the 
blade, purporting that it had been taken from the field of 
Waterloo. My kind old hostess was anxious to exhibit 
all the particulars of their housekeeping, and led me into 
the bedroom, which was in the nicest order, with a snow- 
white quilt upon the bed; and in a little intervening 
room was a washing and bathing apparatus; a conven- 



90 ABOUT WARWICK. 

ience (judging from t lie personal aspect and atmosphere 
of such parties) seldom to be met with in the humbler 
ranks of British life. 

The old soldier and his wife both seemed glad of some- 
body to talk with; but the good woman availed herself 
of the privilege far more copiously than the veteran him- 
self, insomuch that he felt it expedient to give her an 
occasional nudge with his elbow in her well-padded ribs. 
" Don't you be so talkative ! " quoth he ; and, indeed, he 
could hardly find space for a word, and quite as little 
after his admonition as before. Her nimble tongue ran 
over the whole system of life in the hospital. The breth- 
ren, she said, had a yearly stipend (the amount of which 
she did not mention), and such decent lodgings as I saw, 
and some other advantages, free ; and, instead of being 
pestered with a great many rules, and made to dine 
together at a great table, they could manage their little 
household matters as they liked, buying their own din- 
ners and having them cooked in the general kitchen, and 
eating them snugly in their own parlors. "And," added 
she, rightly deeming this the crowning privilege, "with 
the Master's permission, they can have their wives to 
take care of them ; and no harm comes of it ; and what 
more can an old man desire?" It was evident enough 
that the good dame found herself in what she considered 
very rich clover, and, moreover, had plenty of small occu- 
pations to keep her from getting rusty and dull; but the 
veteran impressed me as deriving far less enjoyment from 
the monotonous ease, without fear of change or hope of 
improvement, that had followed upon thirty years of peril 
and vicissitude. I fancied, too, that, while pleased with 
the novelty of a stranger's visit, he was still a little shy 
of becoming a spectacle for the stranger's curiosity; for, 
if he chose to be morbid about the matter, the establish- 



ABOUT WARWICK. 91 

ment was but an almshouse, in spite of its old-fashioned 
magnificence, and his fine blue cloak only a pauper's gar- 
ment, with a silver badge on it that perhaps galled his 
shoulder. In truth, the badge and the peculiar garb, 
though quite in accordance with the manners of the Earl 
of Leicester's age, are repugnant to modern prejudices, 
and might fitly and humanely be abolished. 

A year or two afterwards I paid another visit to the 
hospital, and found a new porter established in office, and 
already capable of talking like a guide-book about the 
history, antiquities, and present condition of the charity. 
He informed me that the twelve brethren are selected 
from among old soldiers of good character, whose other 
resources must not exceed an income of five pounds; 
thus excluding all commissioned officers, whose half-pay 
would of course be more than that amount. They receive 
from the hospital an annuity of eighty pounds each, be- 
sides their apartments, a garment of fine blue cloth, an 
annual abundance of ale, and a privilege at the kitchen- 
fire ; so that, considering the class from which they are 
taken, they may well reckon themselves among the 
fortunate of the earth. Furthermore, they are invested 
with political rights, acquiring a vote for member of Par- 
liament in virtue either of their income or brotherhood. 
On the other hand, as regards their personal freedom or 
conduct, they are subject to a supervision which the Mas- 
ter of the hospital might render extremely annoying, 
were he so inclined ; but . the military restraint under 
which they have spent the active portion of their lives 
makes it easier for them to endure the domestic disci- 
pline here imposed upon their age. The porter bore his 
testimony (whatever were its value) to their being as 
contented and happy as such a set of old people could 
possibly be, and affirmed that they spent much time 



92 ABOUT WARWICK. 

iii burnishing their silver badges, and were as proud of 
them as a nobleman of his star. These badges, by the 
by, except one that was stolen and replaced in Queen 
Anne's time, are the very same that decorated the origi- 
nal twelve brethren. 

I have seldom met with a better guide than my friend 
the porter. He appeared to take a genuine interest in 
the peculiarities of the establishment, and yet had an 
existence apart from them, so that he could the better 
estimate what those peculiarities were. To be sure, his 
knowledge and observation were coufined to external 
things, but, so far, had a sufficiently extensive scope. 
He led me up the staircase and exhibited portions of the 
timber framework of the edifice that are reckoned to be 
eight or nine hundred years old, and are still neither 
worm-eaten nor decayed ; and traced out what had been 
a great hall in the days of the Catholic fraternity, though 
its area is now filled up with the apartments of the twelve 
brethren ; and pointed to ornaments of sculptured oak, 
done in an ancient religious style of art, but hardly vis- 
ible amid the vaulted dimness of the roof. Thence we 
went to the chapel — the Gothic church which I noted 
several pages back — surmounting the gateway that 
stretches half across the street. Here the brethren 
attend daily prayer, and have each a prayer-book of ihe 
finest paper, with a fair, large type for their old eyes. 
The interior of the chapel is very plain, with a picture of 
no merit for an altar-piece, and a single old pane of 
painted glass in the great eastern window, representing, 
— no saint, nor angel, as is customary in such cases, — 
but that grim sinner, the Earl of Leicester. Neverthe- 
less, amid so many tangible proofs of his human sympa- 
thy, one comes to doubt whether the Earl could have 
been such a hardened reprobate, after all. 



I 



ABOUT WARWICK. 93 

We ascended the tower of the chapel, and looked down 
between its battlements into the street, a hundred feet 
below us : while clambering half-way up were foxglove- 
flowers, weeds, small shrubs, and tufts of grass, that had 
rooted themselves into the roughnesses of the stone foun- 
dation. Far around us lay a rich and lovely English land- 
scape, with many a church-spire and noble country-seat, 
and several objects of high historic interest. Edge Hill, 
where the Puritans defeated Charles L, is in sight on the 
edge of the horizon, and much nearer stands the house 
where Cromwell lodged on the night before the battle. 
Right under our eyes, and half enveloping the town with 
its high-shouldering wall, so that all the closely compacted 
streets seemed but a precinct of the estate, was the Earl 
of Warwick's delightful park, a wide extent of sunny 
lawns, interspersed with broad contiguities of forest- 
shade. Some of the cedars of Lebanon were there, — a 
growth of trees in which the Warwick family take an 
hereditary pride. The two highest towers of the castle 
heave themselves up out of a mass of foliage, and look 
down in a lordly manner upon the plebeian roofs of the 
town, a part of which are slate-covered (these are the 
modern houses), and a part are coated with old red tiles, 
denoting the more ancient edifices. A hundred and sixty 
or seventy years ago, a great fire destroyed a considera- 
ble portion of the town, and doubtless annihilated many 
structures of a remote antiquity ; at least, there was a 
possibility of very old houses in the long past of War- 
wick, which King Cymbeline is said to have founded in 
the year one of the Christian era ! 

And this historic fact or poetic fiction, whichever it 
may be, brings to mind a more indestructible reality than 
anything else that has occurred within the present field 
of our vision; though this includes the scene of Guy of 



94 ABOUT WARWICK. 

Warwick's legendary exploits, and some of those of the 
Round Table, to say nothing- of the Battle of Edge Hill. 
For perhaps it was in the landscape now under our eyes 
that Posthumus wandered with the King's daughter, the 
sweet, chaste, faithful, and courageous Imogen, the ten- 
derest and womanliest woman that Shakespeare ever 
made immortal in the world. The silver Avon, which 
we see flowing so quietly by the gray castle, may have 
held their images in its bosom. 

The day, though it began brightly, had long been over- 
cast, and the clouds now spat down a few spiteful drops 
upon ns, besides that the east-wind was very chill ; so 
we descended the winding tower-stair, and went next into 
the garden, one side of which is shut in by almost the 
only remaining portion of the old city-wall. A part of 
the garden-ground is devoted to grass and shrubbery, and 
permeated by gravel- walks, in the centre of one of which 
is a beautiful stone vase of Egyptian sculpture, that for- 
merly stood on the top of a Nilometer, or graduated pillar 
for measuring the rise and fall of the river Nile. On 
the pedestal is a Latin inscription by Dr. Parr, who (his 
vicarage of Hatton being so close at hand) was probably 
often the Master's guest, and smoked his interminable 
pipe along these garden-walks. Of the vegetable-garden, 
which lies adjacent, the lion's share is appropriated to 
the Master, and twelve small, separate patches to the 
individual brethren, who cultivate them at their own 
judgment and by their 'own labor; and their beans and 
cauliflowers have a better flavor, I doubt not, than if 
they had received them directly from the dead hand of 
the Earl of Leicester, like the rest of their food. In 
the farther part of the garden is an arbor for the old 
men's pleasure and convenience, and I should like well 
to sit down among them there, and find out what is really 



ABOUT WARWICK. 95 

the bitter and the sweet of such a sort of life. As for 
the old gentlemen themselves, they put me queerly in 
mind of the Salem Custom-IIouse, and the venerable per- 
sonages whom I found so quietly at anchor there. 

The Master's residence, forming one entire side of the 
quadrangle, fronts on the garden, and wears an aspect at 
once stately and homely. It can hardly have undergone 
anv perceptible change within three centuries; but the 
garden, into which its old windows look, has probably 
put off a great many eccentricities and quaintnesses, in 
the way of cunningly clipped shrubbery, since the gar- 
dener of Queen Elizabeth's reign threw down his rusty 
shears and took his departure. The present Master's 
name is Harris ; he is a descendant of the founder's 
family, a gentleman of independent fortune, and a clergy- 
man of the Established Church, as the regulations of the 
hospital reqnire him to be. I know not what are his 
official emoluments ; but, according to all English prece- 
dent, an ancient charitable fund is certain to be held 
directly for the behoof of those who administer it, and 
perhaps incidentally, in a moderate way, for the nominal 
beneficiaries ; and, in the case before us, the twelve 
brethren being so comfortably provided for, the Master 
is likely to be at least as comfortable as all the twelve 
together. Yet I ought not, even in a distant land, to fling 
an idle gibe against a g3ntleman of whom I really know 
nothing, except that the people under his charge bear all 
possible tokens of being tended and cared for as sedu- 
lously as if each of them sat by a warm fireside of his 
own, with a daughter bustling round the hearth to make 
ready his porridge and his titbits. It is delightful to 
think of the good life which a suitable man, in the Mas- 
ter's position, has an opportunity to lead, — linked to 
time-honored customs, welded in with an ancient system, 



96 ABOUT WARWICK. 

never dreaming of radical change, and bringing all the 
mellowness and richness of the past down into these 
railway-days, which do not compel him or his commu- 
nity to move a whit quicker than of yore. Everybody 
can appreciate the advantages of going ahead ; it might 
be well, sometimes, to think whether there is not a word 
or two to be said in favor of standing still or going to 
sleep. 

From the garden we went into the kitchen, where the 
fire was burning hospitably, and diffused a genial warmth 
far and wide, together with the fragrance of some old 
English roast-beef, which, I think, must at that moment 
have been done nearly to a turn. The kitchen is a lofty, 
spacious, and noble room, partitioned off round the fire- 
place, by a sort of semicircular oaken screen, or rather, 
an arrangement of heavy and high-backed settles, with 
an ever-open entrance between them, on either side of 
which is the omnipresent image of the Bear and Ragged 
Staff, three feet high, and excellently carved in oak, now 
black with time and unctuous kitchen-smoke. The pon- 
derous mantel-piece, likewise of carved oak, tow r ers high 
towards the dusky ceiling, and extends its mighty breadth 
to take in a vast area of hearth, the arch of the fireplace 
being positively so immense that I could compare it to 
nothing but the city gateway. Above its cavernous open- 
ing were crossed two ancient halberds, the weapons, pos- 
sibly, of soldiers who had fought under Leicester in the 
Low Countries; and elsewhere on the walls were dis- 
played several muskets, which some of the present in- 
mates of the hospital may have levelled against the 
French. Another ornament, of the mantel-piece was a 
square of silken needlework or embroidery, faded nearly 
white, but dimly representing that wearisome Bear and 
Hugged Staff, which we should hardly look twice at, only 



ABOUT WARWICK. 97 

that it was wrought by the fair fingers of poor Amy Rob- 
sart, and beautifully framed in oak from Kenilworth Cas- 
tle, at the expense of a Mr. Conner, a countryman of our 
own. Certainly, no Englishman would be capable of this 
little bit of enthusiasm. Finally, the kitchen-firelight 
glistens on a splendid display of copper flagons, all of 
generous capacity, and one of them about as big as a 
half-barrel; the smaller vessels contain the customary 
allowance of ale, and the larger one is filled with that 
foaming liquor on four festive occasions of the year, and 
emptied amain by the jolly brotherhood. I should be 
glad to see them do it ; but it would be an exploit fitter 
for Queen Elizabeth's age than these degenerate times. 

The kitchen is the social hall of the twelve brethren. 
In the daytime, they bring their little messes to be cooked 
here, and eat them in their own parlors ; but after a cer- 
tain hour, the great hearth is cleared and swept, and the 
old men assemble round its blaze, eacli with his tankard 
and his pipe, and hold high converse through the even- 
ing. If the Master be a fit man for his office, methinks 
he will sometimes sit down sociably among them ; for 
there is an elbow-chair by the fireside which it would not 
demean his dignity to fill, since it was occupied by King- 
James at the great festival of nearly three centuries ago. 
A sip of the ale and a whiff of the tobacco-pipe would 
put him in friendly relations with his venerable house- 
hold; and then we can fancy him instructing them by 
pithy apothegms and religious texts which were first ut- 
tered here by some Catholic priest and have impregnated 
the atmosphere ever since. If a joke goes round, it shall 
be of an elder coinage than Joe Miller's, as old as Lord 
Bacon's collection, or as the jest-book that Master Slen- 
der asked for when he lacked small-talk for sweet Anne 
Page. No news shall be spoken of, later than the drift- 
5 G 



98 ABOUT WARWICK. 

iug ashore, on the northern coast, of some stern-post or 
figure-head, a barnacled fragment of one of the great 
galleons of the Spanish Armada. What a tremor would 
pass through the antique group, if a damp newspaper 
should suddenly be spread to dry before the fire ! They 
would feel as if either that, printed sheet or they them- 
selves must be an unreality. What a mysterious awe, if 
the shriek of the railway-train, as it reaches the Warwick 
station, should ever so faintly invade their ears ! Move- 
ment of any kind seems inconsistent with the stability of 
such an institution. Nevertheless, I trust that the ages 
will carry it along with them ; because it is such a pleas- 
ant kind of dream for an American to find his way thither, 
and behold a piece of the sixteenth century set into our 
prosaic times, and then'to depart, and think of its arched 
doorway as a spell-guarded entrance which will never 
be accessible or visible to him any more. 

Not far from the market-place of Warwick stands the 
great church of St. Mary's : a vast edifice, indeed, and 
almost worthy to be a cathedral. People who pretend 
to skill in such matters say that it is in a poor style of 
architecture, though designed (or, at least, extensively 
restored) by Sir Christopher Wren; but I thought it 
very striking, with its wide, high, and elaborate windows, 
its tall towers, its immense length, and (for it was long 
before I outgrew this Americanism, the love of an old 
thing merely for the sake of its age) the tinge of gray 
antiquity over the whole. Once, while I stood gazing 
up at the tower, the clock struck twelve with a very 
deep intonation, and immediately some chimes began to 
play, and kept up their resounding music for five minutes, 
as measured by the hand upon the dial. It was a very 
delightful harmony, as airy as the notes of birds, and 
seemed a not unbecoming freak of half-sportive fancy in 



ABOUT WARWICK. 99 

the huge, ancient, and solemn church ; although I have 
seen an old-fashioned parlor-clock that did precisely the 
same thing, in its small way. 

The great attraction of this edifice is the Beauchamp 
(or, as the English; who delight in vulgarizing their fine 
old Norman names, call it, the Beechum) Chapel, where 
the Earls of Warwick and their kindred have been 
buried, from four hundred years back till within a recent 
period. It is a stately and very elaborate chapel, with a 
large window of ancient painted glass, as perfectly pre- 
served as any that I remember seeing in England, and 
remarkably vivid in its colors. Here are several monu- 
ments with marble figures recumbent upon them, repre- 
senting the Earls in their knightly armor, and their 
dames in the ruffs and court-finery of their day, looking 
hardly stiffer in stone than they must needs have been 
in their starched linen and embroidery. The renowned 
Earl of Leicester of Queen Elizabeth's time, the bene- 
factor of the hospital, reclines at full length on the tablet 
of one of these tombs, side by side with his Countess, — 
not Amy Robsart, but a lady who (unless I have confused 
the story with some other mouldy scandal) is said to have 
avenged poor Amy's murder by poisoning the Earl him- 
self. Be that as it may, both figures, and especially the 
Earl, look like the very types of ancient Honor and Con- 
jugal Eaith. In consideration of his long-enduring kind- 
ness to the twelve brethren, I cannot consent to believe 
him as wicked as he is usually depicted ; and it seems a 
marvel, now that so many well-established historical ver- 
dicts have been reversed, why some enterprising writer 
does not make out Leicester to have been the pattern 
nobleman of his age. 

In the centre of the chapel is the magnificent memo- 
rial of its founder, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of War- 



100 ABOUT WARWICK. 

wick in the time of Henry VI. On a richly ornamented 
altar-tomb of gray marble lies the bronze figure of a 
knight in gilded armor, most admirably executed : for 
the sculptors of those days had wonderful skill in their 
own style, and could make so lifelike an image of a 
warrior, in brass or marble, that, if a trumpet were 
sounded over his tomb, you would expect him to start 
up and handle his sword. The Earl whom we now 
speak of, however, has slept soundly in spite of a more 
serious disturbance than any blast of a trumpet, unless it 
were the final one. Some centuries after his death, the 
floor of the chapel fell down and broke open the stone 
coffin in which he was buried ; and among the fragments 
appeared the anciently entombed Earl of Warwick, with 
the color scarcely faded out of his cheeks, his eyes a little 
sunken, but in other respects looking as natural as if lie 
had died yesterday. But exposure to the atmosphere 
appeared to begin and finish the long-delayed process of 
decay in a moment, causing him to vanish like a bubble ; 
so, that, almost before there had been time to wonder at 
him, there was nothing left of the stalwart Earl save his 
hair. This sole relic the ladies of Warwick made prize 
of, and braided it into rings and brooches for their own 
adornment; and thus, with a chapel and a ponderous 
tomb built on purpose to protect his remains, this great 
nobleman could not help being brought untimely to the 
light of day, nor even keep his lovelocks on his skull 
after he had so long done with love. There seems to be 
a fatality that disturbs people in their sepulchres, when 
they have been over-careful to render them magnificent 
and impregnable, — as witness the builders of the Pyra- 
mids, and Hadrian, Augustus, and the Seipios, and most 
other personages whose mausoleums have«been conspicu- 
ous enough to attract the violator; and as for dead men's 



ABOUT WARWICK. 101 

hair, I have seen a lock of King Edward the Fourth's, 
of a reddish-brown color, which perhaps was once twisted 
round the delicate forefinger of Mistress Shore. 

The direct lineage of the renowned characters that lie 
buried in this splendid chapel has long been extinct. 
The earldom is now held by the Grevilles, descendants of 
the Lord Brooke who was slain in the Parliamentary War; 
and they have recently (that is to say, within a century) 
built a burial-vault on the other side of the church, 
calculated (as the sexton assured me, with a nod as if 
he were pleased) to afford suitable and respectful ac- 
commodation to as many as fourscore coffins. Thank 
Heaven, the old man did not call them " caskets " ! — 
a vile modern phrase, which compels a person of sense 
and good taste to shrink more disgustfully than ever 
before from the idea of being buried at all. But as 
regards those eighty coffins, only sixteen have as yet 
been contributed; audit maybe a question with some 
minds, not merely whether the Grevilles will hold the 
earldom of Warwick until the full number shall be made 
up, but whether earldoms and all manner of lordships 
will not have faded out of England long before those 
many generations shall have passed from the castle to 
the vault. I hope not. A titled and landed aristocracy, 
if anywise an evil and an encumbrance, is so only to the 
nation which is doomed to bear it on its shoulders ; and 
an American, whose sole relation to it is to admire its 
picturesque effect upon society, ought to be the last man 
to quarrel with what affords him so much gratuitous en- 
joyment. Nevertheless, conservative as England is, and 
though I scarce ever found an Englishman who seemed 
really to desire change, there was continually a dull 
sound in my ears as if the old foundations of things were 
crumbling away. Some time or other, — by no irrever- 



102 about Warwick; 

ent effort of violence, but, rather, in spite of all pious 
eiforts to uphold a heterogeneous pile of institutions that 
will have outlasted their vitality, — at some unexpected 
moment, there must come a terrible crash. The sole 
reason why I should desire it to happen in my day is, 
that I might be there to see ! But the ruin of my own 
country is, perhaps, all that I am destined to witness ; 
and that immense catastrophe (though I am strong in the 
faith that there is a national lifetime of a thousand years 
in us yet) would serve any man well enough as his final 
spectacle on earth. 

If the visitor is inclined to carry away any little me- 
morial of Warwick, he had better go to an Old Curiosity 
Shop in the High Street, where there is a vast quantity 
of obsolete gewgaws, great and small, and many of them 
so pretty and ingenious that you wonder how they came 
to be thrown aside and forgotten. As regards its minor 
tastes, the world changes, but does not improve ; it ap- 
pears to me, indeed, that there have been epochs of far 
more exquisite fancy than the present one, in matters of 
personal ornament, and such delicate trifles as we put 
upon a drawing-room table, a mantel-piece, or a what- 
not. The shop in question is near the East Gate, but is 
hardly to be found without careful search, being denoted 
only by the name of " Redfern," painted not very con- 
spicuously in the top-light of the door. Immediately 
on entering, we find ourselves among a confusion of old 
rubbish and valuables, ancient armor, historic portraits, 
ebony cabinets inlaid with pearl, tall, ghostly clocks, 
hideous old china, dim looking-glasses in frames of tar- 
nished magnificence, — a thousand objects of strange 
aspect, and others that almost frighten you by their like- 
ness in unlikeness to things now in use. It is impossible 
to give an idea of the variety of articles, so thickly strewn 



ABOUT WARWICK. 103 

'about that we can scarcely move without overthrowing 
some great curiosity with a crash, or sweeping away 
some small one hitched to our sleeves. Three stories of 
the entire house are crowded in like manner. The col- 
lection, even as we see it exposed to view, must have 
been got together at great cost; but the real treasures 
of the establishment lie in secret repositories, whence 
they are not likely to be drawn forth at an ordinary sum- 
mons ; though, if a gentleman with a competently long 
purse should call for them, I doubt not that the signet- 
ring of Joseph's friend Pharaoh, or the Duke of Alva's 
leading-staff, or the dagger that killed the Duke of Buck- 
ingham (all of which I have seen), or any other almost 
incredible thing, might make its appearance. Gold snuff- 
boxes, antique gems, jewelled goblets, Venetian wine- 
glasses (which burst when poison is poured into them, 
and therefore must not be used for modern wine-drink- 
ing), jasper-handled knives, painted Sevres teacups, — 
in short, there are all sorts of things that a virtuoso 
ransacks the world to discover. 

It would be easier to spend a hundred pounds in Mr. 
Bedfern's shop than to keep the money in one's pocket ; 
but, for my part, I contented myself with buying a little 
old spoon of silver-gilt, and fantastically shaped, and got 
it at all the more reasonable rate because there happened 
to be no legend attached to it. I could supply any defi- 
ciency of that kind at much less expense than regildiug 
the spoon ! 






■tatt&B&.-.v'Sfll 






l - : -"-- -. - Ml 



\ 



RECOLLECTIONS OP A GIFTED 
WOMAN. 




ROM Leamington to Stratford-on-Avon the dis- 
tance is eight or nine miles, over a road that 
seemed to me most beautiful. Not that I can 
recall any memorable peculiarities ; for the country, most 
of the way, is a succession of the gentlest swells and sub- 
sidences, affording wide and far glimpses of champaign 
scenery here and there, and sinking almost to a dead 
level as we draw near Stratford. Any landscape in New 
England, even the tamest, has a more striking outline, 
and besides would have its blue eyes open in those lake- 
lets that we encounter almost from mile to mile at home, 
but of which the Old Country is utterly destitute ; or it 
would smile in our faces through the medium of the way- 
side brooks that vanish under a low stone arch on one 
side of the road, and sparkle out again oil the other. 
Neither of these pretty features is often to be found in 
an English scene. The charm of the latter consists in 
the rich verdure of the fields, in the stately wayside trees 
and carefully kept plantations of wood, and in the old 
and high cultivation that has humanized the very sods by 
mingling so much of man's toil and care among them. 
To an American there is a kind of sanctity even in an 
English turnip-field, when he thinks how long that small 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 105 

square of ground lias been known and recognized as a 
possession, transmitted from father to son, trodden often 
by memorable feet, and utterly redeemed from savagery 
by old acquaintanceship with civilized eyes. The wildest 
things in England are more than half tame. The trees, 
for instance, whether in hedge-row, park, or what they 
call forest, have nothing wild about them. They are 
never ragged ; there is a certain decorous restraint in the 
freest outspread of their branches, though they spread 
wider than any self-nurturing tree; they are tall, vigor- 
ous, bulky, with a look of age-long life, and a promise of 
more years to come, all of which will bring them into 
closer kindred with the race of man. Somebody or other 
has known them from the sapling upward ; and if they 
endure long enough, they grow to be traditionally ob- 
served and honored, and connected with the fortunes of 
old families, till, like Tennyson's Talking Oak, they babble 
with a thousand leafy tongues to ears .that can understand 
them. 

An American tree, however, if it could grow in fair 
competition with an English one of similar species, would 
probably be the more picturesque object of the two. The 
Warwickshire elm has not so beautiful a shape as those 
that overhang our village street; and as for the redoubta- 
ble English oak, there is a certain John Bullism in its 
figure, a compact rotundity of foliage, a lack of irregular 
and various outline, that make it look wonderfully like a 
gigantic cauliflower. Its, leaf, too, is much smaller than 
that of most varieties of American oak ; nor do I mean 
to doubt that the latter, with free leave to grow, reverent 
care and cultivation, and immunity from the axe, would 
live out its centuries as sturdily as its English brother, 
and prove far the nobler and more majestic specimen of 
a tree at the end of them. Still, however one's Yankee 
5* 



106 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOxMAN. 

patriotism may struggle against the admission, it must 
be owned that the trees and other objects of an English 
landscape take hold of the observer by numberless minute 
tendrils, as it were, which, look as closely as we choose, 
we never find in an American scene. The parasitic 
growth is so luxuriant, that the trunk of the trge, so 
gray and dry in our climate, is better worth observing 
than the boughs and foliage; a verdant mossiness coats 
it all over ; so that it looks almost as green as the leaves ; 
and often, moreover, the stately stem is clustered about, 
high upward, with creeping and twining shrubs, the ivy, 
and sometimes the mistletoe, close-clinging friends, nur- 
tured by the moisture and never too fervid sunshine, 
and supporting themselves by the old tree's abundant 
strength. We call it a parasitical vegetation; but, if 
the phrase imply any reproacl^ it is unkind to bestow it 
on this beautiful affection and relationship which exist in 
England between one order of plants and another : the 
strong tree being always ready to give support to the 
trailing shrub, lift it to the sun, and feed it out of its 
own heart, if it crave such food; and the shrub, on its 
part, repaying its foster-father with an ample luxuriance 
of beauty, and adding Corinthian grace to the tree's lofty 
strength. No bitter winter nips these tender little sym- 
pathies, no hot sun burns the life out of them ; and there- 
fore they outlast the longevity of the oak, and, if the 
woodman permitted, would bury it in a green grave, 
when all is over. 

Should there be nothing else along the road to look at, 
an English hedge might well suffice to occupy the eyes, 
and, to a depth beyond what he would suppose, the heart 
of an American. We often set out hedges in our own 
soil, but might as well set out figs or pineapples and ex- 
pect to gather fruit of them. Something grows, to be 



\ 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 107 

sure, which we choose to call a hedge ; but it lacks the 
dense, luxuriant variety of vegetation that is accumulated 
into the English original, in which a botanist would find 
a thousand shrubs and gracious herbs that the hedge- 
maker never thought of planting there. Among them, 
growing wild, are many of the kindred blossoms of the 
very flowers which our pilgrim fathers brought from 
England, for the sake of their simple beauty and home- 
like associations, and which we have ever since been cul- 
tivating in gardens. There is not a softer trait to be 
found in the character of those stern men than that they 
should have been sensible of these flower-roots clinging 
among the fibres of their rugged hearts, and have felt 
the necessity of bringing them over sea and making them 
hereditary in the new land, instead of trusting to what 
rarer beauty the wilderness might have in store for them. 
Or, if the roadside has no hedge, the ugliest stone 
fence (such as, in America, would keep itself bare and 
unsympathizing till the end of time) is sure to be covered 
with the small handiwork of Nature ; that careful mother 
lets nothing go naked there, and if she cannot provide 
clothing, gives at least embroidery. No sooner is the 
fence built than she adopts and adorns it as a part of her 
original plan, treating the hard, uncomely construction 
as if it had all along been a favorite idea of her own. A 
little sprig of ivy may be seen creeping up the side of the 
low wall and clinging fast with its many feet to the rough 
surface ; a tuft of grass roots itself between two of the 
stones, where a pinch or two of wayside dust has been 
moistened into nutritious soil for it; a small bunch of 
fern grows in another crevice ; a deep, soft, verdant moss 
spreads itself along the top and over all the available ine- 
qualities of the fence ; and where nothing else will grow, 
lichens stick tenaciously to the bare stones and variegate 



108 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

the monotonous gray with hues of yellow and red. Fi- 
nally, a great deal of shrubbery clusters along the base 
of the stone wall, and takes away the hardness of its out- 
line ; and in due time, as the upshot of these apparently 
aimless or sportive touches, we recognize that the benefi- 
cent Creator of all things, working through his hand- 
maiden whom we call Nature, has deigned to mingle a 
charm of divine gracefulness even with so earthly an in- 
stitution as a boundary fence. The clown who wrought 
at it little dreamed what fellow-laborer he had. 

The English should send us photographs of portions 
of the trunks of trees, the tangled and various products of 
a hedge, and a square foot of an old wall. They can 
hardly send anything else so characteristic. Their art- 
ists, especially of the later school, sometimes toil to 
depict such subjects, but are apt to stiffen the lithe ten- 
drils in the process. The poets succeed better, with 
Tennyson at their head, and often produce ravishing 
effects by dint of a tender minuteness of touch, to which 
the genius of the soil and climate artfully impels them : 
for, as regards grandeur, there are loftier scenes in many 
countries than the best that England can show ; but, for 
the picturesqueness of the smallest object that lies under 
its gentle gloom and sunshine, there is no scenery like it 
anywhere. 

In the foregoing paragraphs I have strayed away to a 
long distance from the road to Stratford-on-Avon ; for I 
remember no such stone fences as I have been speaking 
of in Warwickshire, nor elsewhere in England, except 
among the Lakes, or in Yorkshire, and the rough and 
hilly countries to the north of it. Hedges there were 
along my road, however, and broad, level fields, rustic 
hamlets, and cottages of ancient date, — from the roof of 
one of which the occupant was tearing away the thatch, 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 109 

and showing what an accumulation of dust, dirt, mouldi- 
ness, roots of weeds, families of mice, swallows' nests, and 
hordes of insects had been deposited there since that old 
straw was new. Estimating its antiquity from these 
tokens, Shakespeare himself, in one of his morning ram- 
bles out of his native town, might have seen the thatch 
laid on ; at all events, the cottage-walls were old enough 
to have known him as a guest. A few modern villas 
were also to be seen, and perhaps there were mansions 
of old gentility at no great distance, but hidden among 
trees ; for it is a point of English pride that such houses 
seldom allow themselves to be visible from the high-road. 
In short, I recollect nothing specially remarkable along 
the way, nor in the immediate approach to Stratford; 
and yet the picture of that June morning has a glory in 
my memory, owing chiefly, 1 believe, to the charm of the 
English summer-weather, the really good days of which 
are the most delightful that mortal man can ever hope to 
be favored with. Such a genial warmth ! A little too 
warm, it might be, yet only to such a degree as to assure 
an American (a certainty to which he seldom attains till 
attempered to the customary austerity of an English sum- 
mer-day) that he was quite warm enough. And after all, 
there was an unconquerable freshness in the atmosphere, 
which every little movement of a breeze shook over me 
like a dash of the ocean-spray. Such days need bring us 
no other happiness than their own light and temperature. 
No doubt, I could not have enjoyed it so exquisitely, 
except that there must be still latent in us Western wan- 
derers (even after an absence of two centuries and more), 
an adaptation to the English climate which makes us sen- 
sible of a motherly kindness in its scantiest sunshine, and 
overflows us with delight at its more lavish smiles. 
The spire of Shakespeare's church — the Church of 



110 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

the Holy Trinity — begins to show itself among the 
trees at a little distance from Stratford. Next we see 
the shabby old dwellings, intermixed with mean-looking 
houses of modern date ; and the streets being quite level, 
you are struck and surprised by nothing so much as the 
tameness of the general scene , as if Shakespeare's genius 
were vivid enough to have wrought pictorial splendors in 
the town where he was born. Here and there, however, 
a queer edifice meets your eye, endowed with the indi- 
viduality that belongs only to the domestic architecture 
of times gone by; the house seems to have grown out 
of some odd quality in its inhabitant, as a sea-shell is 
moulded from within by the character of its inmate ; and 
having been built in a strange fashion, generations ago, 
it has ever since been growing stranger and quainter, as 
old humorists are apt to do. Here, too (as so often im- 
pressed me in decayed English towns), there appeared to 
be a greater abundance of aged people wearing small- 
clothes and leaning on sticks than you could assemble on 
our side of the water by sounding a trumpet and pro- 
claiming a reward for the most venerable. I tried to 
account for this phenomenon by several theories : as, for 
example, that our new towns are unwholesome for age 
and kill it off unseasonably ; or that our old men have a 
subtile sense of fitness, and die of their own accord rather 
than live in an unseemly contrast with youth and novelty : 
but the secret may be, after all, that hair-dyes, false teeth, 
modern arts of dress, and other contrivances of a skin- 
deep youthfulness, have not crept into these antiquated 
English towns, and so people grow old without the weary 
necessity of seeming younger than they are. 

After wandering through two or three streets, I found 
my way to Shakespeare's birthplace, which is almost a 
smaller and humbler house than any description can pre- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. Ill 

pare the visitor to expect ; so inevitably does an august 
inhabitant make his abode palatial to our imaginations, 
receiving his guests, indeed, in a caslle in the air, until 
we unwisely insist on meeting him among the sordid 
lanes and alleys of lower earth. The portion of the edi- 
fice with which Shakespeare had anything to do is hardly 
large enough, in the basement, to contain the butcher's 
stall that one of his descendants kept, and that still 
remains there, windowless, with the cleaver-cuts in its 
hacked counter, which projects into the street under a 
little penthouse-roof, as if waiting for a new occupant. 
The upper half of the door was open, and, on my rap- 
ping at it, a young person in black made her appearance 
and admitted me ; she was not a menial, but remarkably 
genteel (an American characteristic) for an English girl, 
and was probably the daughter of the old gentlewoman 
who takes care of the house. This lower room has a 
pavement of gray slabs of stone, which may have been 
rudely squared when the house was new, but are now all 
tracked, broken, and disarranged in a most unaccounta- 
ble way. Oue does not see how any ordinary usage, for 
whatever length of time, should have so smashed these 
heavy stones; it is as if an earthquake had burst up 
through the floor, which afterwards had been imperfectly 
trodden down again. The room is whitewashed and very 
clean, but wofully shabby and dingy, coarsely built, and 
such as the most poetical imagination would find it diffi- 
cult to idealize. In the rear of this apartment is the 
kitchen, a still smaller room, of a similar rude aspect ; it 
has a great, rough fireplace, with space for a large family 
under the blackened opening of the chimney, and an im- 
mense passageway for the smoke, through which Shake- 
speare may have seen the blue sky by day and the stars 
glimmering down at him by night. It is now a dreary 



112 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

spot where the long-extinguished embers used to be. A 
glowing fire, even if it covered only a quarter part of 
the hearth, might still do much towards making the old 
kitchen cheerful. But we get a depressing idea of the 
stifled, poor, sombre kind of life that could have beeu 
lived in such a dwelling, where this room seems to have 
been the gathering-place of the family, with no breadth 
or scope, no good retirement, but old and young huddling 
together cheek by jowl. What a hardy plant was Shake- 
speare's geuius, how fatal its development, since it could 
not be blighted in such an atmosphere ! It only brought 
human nature the closer to him, and put more unctuous 
earth about his roots. 

Thence I was ushered up stairs to the room in which 
Shakespeare is supposed to have been born : though, if 
you peep too curiously into the matter, you may find the 
shadow of an ugly doubt on this, as well as most other 
points of his mysterious life. It is the chamber over 
the butcher's shop, and is lighted by one broad window 
containing a great many small, irregular panes of glass. 
The floor is made of planks, very rudely hewn, and fit- 
ting together with little neatness ; the naked beams and 
rafters, at the sides of the room and overhead, bear the 
original marks of the builder's broad-axe, with no evi- 
dence of an attempt to smooth off the job. Again we 
have to reconcile ourselves to the smallness of the space 
enclosed by these illustrious walls, — a circumstance 
more difficult to accept, as regards places that we have 
heard, read, thought, and dreamed much about, than any 
other disenchanting particular of a mistaken ideal. A 
few paces — perhaps seven or eight — take us from end 
to end of it. So low it is, that I could easily touch the 
ceiling, and might have done so without a tiptoe-stretch, 
had it been a good deal higher ; and this humility of the 



ItECOLLECTlONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 113 

chamber Las tempted a vast multitude of people to write 
their names overhead in pencil. Every inch of the side- 
walls, even into the obscurest nooks and corners, is cov- 
ered with a similar record ; all the window-panes, more- 
over, are scrawled with diamond signatures, among which 
is said to be that of Walter Scott ; but so many persons 
have sought to immortalize themselves in close vicinity 
to his' name, that I really could not trace him out. Me- 
thinks it is strange that people do not strive to forget 
their forlorn little identities, in such situations, instead of 
thrusting them forward into the dazzle of a great re- 
nown, where, if noticed, they cannot but be deemed im- 
pertinent. 

This room, and the entire house, so far as I saw it, are 
whitewashed and exceedingly clean ; nor is there the 
aged, musty smell with which old Chester first made me 
acquainted, and which goes far to cure an American of 
his excessive predilection for antique residences. An 
old lady, who took charge of me up stairs, had the man- 
ners and aspect of a gentlewoman, and talked with some- 
what formidable knowledge and appreciative intelligence 
about Shakespeare. Arranged on a table and in chairs 
were various prints, views of houses and scenes con- 
nected with Shakespeare's memory, together with editions 
of his works and local publications about his home and 
haunts, from the sale of which this respectable lady per- 
haps realizes a handsome profit. At any rate, I bought 
a good many of them, conceiving that it might be the 
civillest way of requiting her for her instructive conver- 
sation and the trouble she took in showing me the house. 
It cost me a pang (not a curmudgeonly, but a gentle- 
manly one) to offer a downright fee to the lady-like girl 
who had admitted me ; but I swallowed my delicate 
scruples with some little difficulty, and she digested hers, 

n 



114 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

so far as I could observe, with no difficulty at all. In 
fact, nobody need fear to hold out half a crown to any 
person with whom he has occasion to speak a word in 
England. 

I should consider it unfair to quit Shakespeare's house 
without the frank acknowledgment that I was conscious 
of not the slightest emotion while viewing it, nor any 
quickening of the imagination. This has often happened 
to me in my visits to memorable places. Whatever 
pretty and apposite reflections 1 may have made upon 
the subject had either occurred to me before I ever saw 
Stratford, or have been elaborated since. It is pleasant, 
nevertheless, to think that I have seen the place ; and I 
believe that I can form a more sensible and vivid idea of 
Shakespeare as a flesh-and-blood individual now that 1 
have stood on the kitchen-hearth and in the birth-cham- 
ber; but I am not quite certain that this power of reali- 
zation is altogether desirable in reference to a great poet. 
The Shakespeare whom I met there took various guises, 
but had not his laurel on. He was successively the 
roguish boy, — the youthful deer-stealer, — the comrade 
of players, — the too familiar friend of Davenant's 
mother, — the careful, thrifty, thriven man of properly 
who came back from London to lend money on bond, and 
occupy the best house in Stratford, — the mellow, red- 
nosed, autumnal boon-companion of John a' Combe, — 
and finally (or else the Stratford gossips belied him), the 
victim of convivial habits, who met his death by tumbling 
into a ditch on his way home from a drinking-bout, and 
left his second-best bed to his poor wife. 

I feel, as sensibly as the reader can, what horrible im- 
piety it is to remember these things, be they true or false. 
In either case, they ought to vanish out of sight on the 
distant ocean-line of the past, leaving a pure, white menu 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 115 

ory, even as a sail, though perhaps darkened with many 
stains, looks snowy white on 1 lie far horizon. But I 
draw a moral from these unworthy reminiscences and 
this embodiment of the poet, as suggested by some of 
the grimy actualities of his life. It is for the high in- 
terests of the world not to insist upon finding out that its 
greatest men are, in a certain lower sense, very much 1 he 
same kind of men as the rest of us, and often a little 
worse ; because a common mind cannot properly digest 
such a discovery, nor ever know the true proportion of 
the great man's good and evil, nor how small a part 
of him it was that touched our muddy or dusty earth. 
Thence comes moral bewilderment, and even intellectual 
loss, in regard to what is best of him. When Shakespeare 
invoked a curse on the man who should stir his bones, 
he perhaps meant the larger share of it for him or them 
who should pry into his perishing earthliness, the defects 
or even the merits of the character that he wore in Strat- 
ford, when he had left mankind so much to muse upon 
that was imperishable and divine. Heaven keep me from 
incurring any part of the anathema in requital for the 
irreverent sentences above written ! 

Prom Shakespeare's house, the next step, of course, is 
to visit his burial-place. The appearance of the church 
is most venerable and beautiful, standing amid a great 
green shadow of lime-trees, above which rises the spire, 
while the Gothic battlements and buttresses and vast 
arched windows are obscurely seen through the boughs. 
The Avon loiters past the churchyard, an exceedingly 
sluggish river, which might seem to have been consider- 
ing which way it should flow ever since Shakespeare left 
off paddling in it and gathering the large forget-me-nots 
that grow among its flags and water-weeds. 

An old man in small-clothes was waiting at the gate; 



116 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

and inquiring whether I wished to go in, lie preceded me 
to the church-porch, and rapped. 1 could have done it 
quite as effectually for myself; but it seems, the old peo- 
ple of the neighborhood haunt about the churchyard, in 
spite of the frowns and remonstrances of the sexton, who 
grudges them the half-eleemosynary sixpence which they 
sometimes get from visitors. I was admitted into the 
church by a respectable-looking and intelligent man in 
black, the parish-clerk, I suppose, and probably holding 
a richer incumbency than his vicar, if all the fees which 
he handles remain in his own pocket. He was already 
exhibiting the Shakespeare monuments to two or three 
visitors, and several other parties came in while I was 
there. 

The poet and his family are in possession of what may 
be considered the very best burial-places that the church 
affords. They lie in a row, right across the breadth of 
the chancel, the foot of each gravestone being close to the 
elevated floor on which the altar stands. Nearest to the 
side-wall, beneath Shakespeare's bust, is a slab bearing 
a Latin inscription addressed to his wife, and covering 
her remains ; then his own slab, with the old anathema- 
tizing stanza upon it ; then that of Thomas Nash, who 
married his granddaughter; then that of Dr. Hall, the 
husband of his daughter Susannah; and, lastly, Susan- 
nah's own. Shakespeare's is the commonest-looking slab 
of all, being just such a flag-stone as Essex Street in 
Salem used to be paved with, wdien I was a boy. More- 
over, unless my eyes or recollection deceive me, there 
is a crack across it, as if it had already undergone some 
such violence as the inscription deprecates. Unlike the 
other monuments of the family, it bears no name, nor am 
I acquainted with the grounds or authority on which it 
is absolutely determined to be Shakespeare's ; although', 



\ 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 117 

being in a range with those of his wife and children, it 
might naturally be attributed to him. But, then, why 
does his wife, who died afterwards, take precedence of 
him and occupy the place next his bust? And where 
are the graves of another daughter and a son, who have 
a better right in the family row than Thomas Nash, his 
grandson-in-law ? Might not one or both of them have 
been laid under the nameless stone ? But it is dangerous 
trifling with Shakespeare's dust ; so I forbear to meddle 
further with the grave (though the prohibition makes it 
tempting), and shall let whatever bones be in it rest in 
peace. Yet I must needs add that the inscription on the 
bust seems to imply that Shakespeare's grave was directly 
underneath it. 

The poet's bust is affixed to the northern wall of the 
church, the base of it being about a man's height, or 
rather more, above the floor of the chancel. The fea- 
tures of this piece of sculpture are entirely unlike any 
portrait of Shakespeare that 1 have ever seen, and compel 
me to take down the beautiful, lofty-browed, and noble 
picture of him which has hitherto hung in my mental 
portrait-gallery. The bust cannot be said to represent a 
beautiful face or an eminently noble head ; but it clutches 
firmly hold of one's sense of reality and insists upon your 
accepting it, if not as Shakespeare the poet, yet as the 
wealthy burgher of Stratford, the friend of John a' 
Combe, who lies yonder in the corner. I know not what 
the phrenologists say to the bust. The forehead is but 
moderately developed, and retreats somewhat, the upper 
part of the skull rising pyramidally ; the eyes are promi- 
nent almost beyond the penthouse of Ihe brow; the 
upper lip is so long that it must have been almost a 
deformity, unless the sculptor artistically exaggerated its 
length, in consideration, that, on the pedestal, it must be 



118 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

foreshortened by being looked at from below. On the 
whole, Shakespeare must have had a singular rather than 
a prepossessing face ; and it is wonderful how, with this 
bust before its eyes, the world has persisted in main- 
taining an erroneous notion of his appearance, allowing 
painters and sculptors to foist their idealized nonsense 
on us all, instead of the genuine man. For my part, the 
Shakespeare of my mind's eye is henceforth to be a per- 
sonage of a ruddy English complexion, with a reasonably 
capacious brow, intelligent and quickly observant eyes, 
a nose curved slightly outward, a long, queer upper lip, 
with the mouth a little unclosed beneath it, and cheeks 
considerably developed in the lower part and beneath 
the chin. But when Shakespeare was himself (for nine 
tenths of the time, according to all appearances, he was 
but the burgher of Stratford), he doubtless shone through 
this dull mask and transfigured it into the face of an 
angel. 

Fifteen or twenty feet behind the row of Shakespeare 
gravestones is the great east-window of the church, now 
brilliant with stained glass of recent manufacture. On 
one side of this window, under a sculptured arch of 
marble, lies a full-length marble figure of John a' Combe, 
clad in what I take to be a robe of municipal dignity, and 
holding its hands devoutly clasped. It is a sturdy Eng- 
lish figure, with coarse features, a type of ordinary man 
whom we smile to see immortalized in the sculpturesque 
material of poets and heroes; but the -prayerful attitude 
encourages us to believe that the old usurer may not, 
after all, have had that grim reception in the other world 
which Shakespeare's squib foreboded for him. By the by, 
till I grew somewhat familiar with Warwickshire pro 
nunc iat ion, I never understood that the point of those 
ill-natured lines was a pun. " 'Oho ! ' quoth the Devil, 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 119 

•' 't is my John a' Combe ! ' " — that is, " My John has 
come ! " 

Close to the poet's bust is a nameless, oblong", cubic 
tomb, supposed to be that of a clerical dignitary of the 
fourteenth century. The church has other mural monu- 
ments and altar-tombs, one or two of the latter uphold- 
ing the recumbent figures of knights in armor and their 
dames, very eminent and worshipful personages in their 
day, no doubt, but doomed to appear forever intrusive 
and impertinent within the precincts which Shakespeare 
has made his own. His renown is tyrannous, and suffers 
nothing else to be recognized within the scope of its 
material presence, unless illuminated by some side-ray 
from himself. The clerk informed me that interments no 
longer take place in any part of the church. And it is 
better so ; for methinks a person of delicate individual- 
ity, curious about his burial-place, and desirous of six 
feet of earth for himself alone, could never endure to lie 
buried near Shakespeare, but would rise up at midnight 
and grope his way out of the church-door, rather than 
sleep in the shadow of so stupendous a memory. 

I should hardly have dared to add another to the in- 
numerable descriptions of St rat ford-on- Avon, if it had not 
seemed to me that this would form a fitting framework to 
some reminiscences of a very remarkable woman. Her 
labor, while she lived, was, of a nature and purpose out- 
wardly irreverent to the name of Shakespeare, yet, by 
its actual tendency, entitling her to the distinction of be- 
ing that one of all his worshippers who sought, though 
she knew it not, to place the richest and stateliest dia- 
dem upon his brow. We Americans, at least, in the 
scanty annals of our literature, cannot afford to forget 
her high and conscientious exercise of noble faculties, 
which, indeed, if you look at the matter in one way, 



120 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

evolved only a miserable error, but, more fairly consid- 
ered, produced a result worth almost what it cost her. 
Her faith in her own ideas was so genuine, that, erro- 
neous as they were, it transmuted them to gold, or, at 
all events, interfused a large proportion of that precious 
and indestructible substance among the waste material 
from which it can readily be sifted. 

The only time I ever saw Miss Bacon was in London, 
where she had lodgings in Spring Street, Sussex Gar- 
dens, at the house of a grocer, a portly, middle-aged, 
civil, and friendly man, who, as well as his wife, appeared 
to feel a personal kindness towards their lodger. I was 
ushered up two (and I rather believe three) pair of stairs 
into a parlor somewhat humbly furnished, and told that 
Miss Bacon would come soon. There were a number of 
books on the table, and, looking into them, I found that 
every one had some reference, more or less immediate, 
to her Shakespearian theory, — a volume of Raleigh's 
" History of the World," a volume of Montaigne, a 
volume of Lord Bacon's letters, a volume of Shake- 
speare's plays ; and on another table lay a large roll of 
manuscript, which I presume to have been a portion of 
her work. To be sure, there was a pocket-Bible among 
the books, but everything else referred to the one des- 
potic idea that had got possession of her mind ; and as it 
had engrossed her whole soul as well as her intellect, I 
have no doubt that she had established subtile connec- 
tions between it and the Bible likewise. As is apt to be 
the case with solitary students, Miss Bacon probably read 
late and rose late ; for I took up Montaigne (it was Haz- 
litt's translation) and had been reading his journey to 
Italy a good while before she appeared. 

1 had expected (I he more shame for me, having no 
other ground of such expectation than that she was a 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 121 

literary woman) to see a very homely, uncouth, elderly 
personage, and was quite agreeably disappointed by her 
aspect. She was rather uncommonly tall, and had a 
striking and expressive face, dark hair, dark eyes, which 
shone with an inward light as soon as she began to speak, 
and by and by a color came into her cheeks and made 
her look almost young. Not that she really was so ; she 
must have been beyond middle age : and there was no 
unkinduess in coming to that conclusion, because, mak- 
ing allowance for years and ill-health, I could suppose her 
to have been handsome and exceedingly attractive once. 
Though wholly estranged from society, there was little 
or no restraint or embarrassment in her manner : lonely 
people are generally glad to give utterance to their pent- 
up ideas, and often bubble over with them as freely as 
children with their new-found syllables. I cannot tell 
how it came about, but we immediately found ourselves 
taking a friendly and familiar tone together, and began 
to talk as if we had known one another a very long while. 
A little preliminary correspondence had indeed smoothed 
the way, and we had a definite topic in the contemplated 
publication of her book. 

She was very communicative about her theory, and 
would have been much more so had I desired it ; but, 
being conscious within myself of a sturdy unbelief, I 
deemed it fair and honest rather to repress than draw 
her out upon the subject. Unquestionably, she was a 
monomaniac ; these overmastering ideas about the au- 
thorship of Shakespeare's plays, and the deep political 
philosophy concealed beneath the surface of them, had 
completely thrown her off her balance ; but at the same 
time they had wonderfully developed her intellect, and 
made her what she could not otherwise have become. It 
was a very singular phenomenon : a system of philosophy 
6 



I'Z'l RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

growing up in this woman's mind without her volition, — 
contrary, in fact, to the determined resistance of her voli- 
tion, — and substituting itself in the place of everything 
that originally grew there. To have based such a sys- 
tem on fancy, and unconsciously elaborated it for herself, 
was almost as wonderful as really to have found it in 
the plays. But, in a certain sense, she did actually find 
it there. Shakespeare has surface beneath surface, to 
an immeasurable depth, adapted to the plummet-line of 
every reader ; his works present many phases of truth, 
each with scope large enough to fill a contemplative 
mind. Whatever you seek in him you will surely dis- 
cover, provided you seek truth. There is no exhausting 
the various interpretation of his symbols ; and a thousand 
years hence, a world of new readers will possess a whole 
library of new books, as we ourselves do, in these vol- 
umes old already. I had half a mind to suggest to Miss 
Bacon this explanation of her theory, but forbore, be- 
cause (as I could readily perceive) she had as princely 
a spirit as Queen Elizabeth herself, and would at once 
have motioned me from the room. 

I had heard, long ago, that she believed that the ma- 
terial evidences of her dogma as to the authorship, to- 
gether with the key of the new philosophy, would be 
found buried in Shakespeare's grave. Recently, as I 
understood her, this notion had been somewhat modified, 
and was now accurately defined and fully developed in 
her mind, with a result of perfect certainty. In Lord 
Bacon's letters, on which she laid her finger as she 
spoke, she had discovered the key and clew to the whole 
mystery. There were definite and minute instructions 
how to find a will and other documents relating to the 
conclave of Elizabethan philosophers, which were con- 
cealed (when and by whom she did not inform me) in a 



, RECOLLECTIONS OP A GIFTED WOMAN. 123 

hollow space in the under surface of Shakespeare's grave- 
stone. Thus the terrible prohibition to remove the stone 
was accounted for. The directions, she intimated, went 
completely and precisely to the point, obviating all diffi- 
culties in the way of coming at the treasure, and even, 
if I remember right, were so contrived as to ward off 
any troublesome consequences likely to ensue from the 
interference of the parish-officers. All that Miss Bacon 
now remained in England for — indeed, the object for 
which she had come hither, and which had kept her here 
for three years past — was to obtain possession of these 
material and unquestionable proofs of the authenticity 
of her theory. 

She communicated all this strange matter in a low, 
quiet tone; while, on my part, I listened as quietly, and 
without any expression of dissent. Controversy against 
a faith so settled would have shut her up at once, and 
that, too, without in the least weakening her belief in the 
existence of those treasures of the tomb ; and had it been 
possible to convince her of their intangible nature, I ap- 
prehend that there would have been nothing left for the 
poor enthusiast save to collapse and die. She frankly 
confessed that she could no longer bear the society of 
those who did not at least lend a certain sympathy to her 
views, if not fully share in them ; and meeting little sym- 
pathy or none, she had now entirely secluded herself 
from the world. In all these years, she had seen Mrs. 
Farrar a few times, but had long ago given her up, — 
Carlyle once or twice, but not of late, although he had 
received her kindly ; Mr. Buchanan, while Minister in 
England, had once called on her, and General Campbell, 
our Consul in London, had met her two or three times 
on business. With these exceptions, which she marked 
so scrupulously that it was perceptible what epochs they 



1£4 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

were in the monotonous passage of her days, she had 
lived in the profouudest solitude. She never walked 
out; she suffered much from ill-health; and yet, she 
assured me, she was perfectly happy. 

I could well conceive it ; for Miss Bacon imagined 
herself to have received (what is certainly the greatest 
boon ever assigned to mortals) a high mission in the 
world, with adequate powers for its accomplishment ; and 
lest even these should prove insufficient, she had faith 
that special interpositions of Providence were forwarding 
her human efforts. This idea was continually coming to 
the surface, during our interview. She believed, for 
example, that she had been providentially led to her 
lodging-house and put in relations with the good-natured 
grocer and his family ; and, to say the truth, considering 
what a savage and stealthy tribe the London lodging- 
house keepers usually are, the honest kindness of this 
man and his household appeared to have been little less 
than miraculous. Evidently, too, she thought that Provi- 
dence had brought me forward— a man somewhat con- 
nected with literature — at the critical juncture when 
she needed a negotiator with the booksellers ; and, on 
my part, though little accustomed to regard myself as a 
divine minister, and though I might even have preferred 
that Providence should select some other instrument, I 
had no scruple in undertaking to do what I could for her. 
Her book, as I could see by turning it over, was a very 
remarkable one, and worthy of being offered to the pub- 
lic, which, if wise enough to appreciate it, would be 
thankful for what was good in it and merciful to its 
faults. It was founded on a prodigious error, but was 
built up from that foundation with a good many prodi- 
gious truths. And, at all events, whether I could aid her 
literary views or no, it would have been both rash and 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 125 

impertinent in me to attempt drawing poor Miss Bacon 
out of her delusions, which were the condition on which 
she lived in comfort and joy, and in the exercise of great 
intellectual power. So I left her to dream as she pleased 
about the treasures of Shakespeare's tombstone, and to 
form whatever designs might seem good to herself for 
obtaining possession of them. I was sensible of a lady- 
like feeling of propriety in Miss Bacon, and a New 
England orderliness in her character, and, in spite of her 
bewilderment, a sturdy common-sense, which I trusted 
would begin to operate at the right time, and keep her 
from any actual extravagance. And as regarded this 
matter of the tombstone, so it proved. 

The interview lasted above an hour, during which she 
flowed out freely, as to the sole auditor, capable of any 
degree of intelligent sympathy, whom she had met with 
in a very long while. Her conversation was remarkably 
suggestive, alluring forth one's own ideas and fantasies 
from the shy places where they usually haunt. She was 
indeed an admirable talker, considering how long she 
had held her tongue for lack of a listener, — pleasant, 
sunny and shadowy, often piquant, and giving glimpses 
of all a woman's various and readily changeable moods 
and humors ; and beneath them all there ran a deep and 
powerful under-current of earnestness, which did not fail 
to produce in the listener's mind something like a tem- 
porary faith in what she herself believed so fervently. 
But the streets of London are not favorable to enthusi- 
asms of this kind, nor, in fact, are they likely to flourish 
anywhere in the English atmosphere ; so that, long be- 
fore reaching Paternoster Bow, I felt that it would be a 
difficult and doubtful matter to advocate the publication 
of Miss Bacon's book. Nevertheless, it did finally get 
published. 



126 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

Months before that happened, however, Miss Bacon 
had taken up her residence at Stratford-on-Avon, drawn 
thither by the magnetism of those rich secrets which she 
supposed to have been hidden by Raleigh, or Bacon, or 
I know not whom, in Shakespeare's grave, and protected 
there by a curse, as pirates used to bury their gold in 
the guardianship of a fiend. She took a humble lodging 
and began to haunt the church like a ghost. But she 
did not condescend to any stratagem or underhand at- 
tempt to violate the grave, which, had she been capable 
of admitting such an idea, might possibly have been ac- 
complished by the aid of a resurrection-man. As her 
first step, she made acquaintance with the clerk, and be- 
gan to sound him as to the feasibility of her enterprise 
and his own willingness to engage in it. The clerk ap- 
parently listened with not unfavorable ears ; but, as his 
situation (which the fees of pilgrims, more numerous 
than at any Catholic shrine, render lucrative) would have 
been forfeited by any malfeasance in office, he stipulated 
for liberty to consult the vicar. Miss Bacon requested 
to tell her own story to the reverend gentleman, and 
seems to have been received by him with the utmost 
kindness, and even to have succeeded in making a cer- 
tain impression on his mind as to the desirability of the 
search. As their interview had been under the seal of 
secrecy, he asked permission to consult a friend, who, as 
Miss Bacon either found out or surmised, was a prac- 
titioner of the law. What the legal friend advised she 
did not learn ; but the negotiation continued, and cer- 
tainly was never broken off by an absolute refusal on the 
vicar's part. He, perhaps, w r as kindly temporizing with 
our poor countrywoman, whom an Englishman of ordi- 
nary mould would have sent to a lunatic asylum at once. 
I cannot help fancying, however, that her familiarity with 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 127 

the events of Shakespeare's life, and of his death and 
burial (of which she would speak as if she had been 
present at the edge of the grave), and all the history, 
literature, and personalities of the Elizabethan age, to- 
gether with the prevailing power of her own belief, and 
the eloquence with which she knew how to enforce it, 
had really gone some little way toward making a con- 
vert of the good clergyman. If so, I honor him above 
all the hierarchy of England. 

The affair certainly looked very hopeful. However 
erroneously, Miss Bacon had understood from the vicar 
that no obstacles would be interposed to the investiga- 
tion, and that he himself would sanction it with his pres- 
ence. It was to take place after nightfall ; and all pre- 
liminary arrangements being made, the vicar and clerk 
professed to wait only her word in order to set about 
lifting the awful stone from the sepulchre. So, at least, 
Miss Bacon believed ; and as her bewilderment was en- 
tirely in her own thoughts, and never disturbed her per- 
ception or accurate remembrance of external things, I 
see no reason to doubt it, except it be the tinge of ab- 
surdity in the fact. But, in this apparently prosperous 
state of things, her own convictions began to falter. A 
doubt stole into her mind whether she might not have 
mistaken the depository and mode of concealment of 
those historic treasures ; and after once admitting the 
doubt, she was afraid to hazard the shock of uplifting 
the stone and finding nothing. She examined the sur- 
face of the gravestone, and endeavored, without stirring 
it, to estimate whether it were of such thickness as to 
be capable of containing the archives of the Elizabethan 
club. She went over anew the proofs, the clews, the 
enigmas, the pregnant sentences, which she had discov- 
ered in Bacon's letters and elsewhere, and now was 



128 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

frightened to perceive that they did not point so defi- 
nitely to Shakespeare's tomb as she had heretofore sup- 
posed. There was an unmistakably distinct reference to 
a tomb, but it might be Bacon's, or Raleigh's, or Spen- 
ser's ; and instead of the " Old Player," as she profanely 
called him, it might be either of those three illustrious 
dead, poet, warrior, or statesman, whose ashes, in West- 
minster Abbey, or the Tower burial-ground, or wherever 
they sleep, it was her mission to disturb. It is very pos- 
sible, moreover, that her acute mind may always have had 
a lurking and deeply latent distrust of its own fantasies, 
and that this now became strong enough to restrain her 
from a decisive step. 

But she continued to hover around the church, and 
seems to have had full freedom of entrance in the day- 
time, and special license, on one occasion at least, at a 
late hour of the night. She went thither with a dark- 
lantern, which could but twinkle like a glow-worm 
through the volume of obscurity that filled the great 
dusky edifice. Groping her way up the aisle and towards 
the chancel, she sat down on the elevated part of the 
pavement above Shakespeare's grave. If the divine 
poet really wrote the inscription there, and cared as much 
about the quiet of his bones as its deprecatory earnest- 
ness would imply, it was time for those crumbling relics 
to bestir themselves under her sacrilegious feet. But 
they were safe. She made no attempt to disturb them ; 
though, I believe, she looked narrowly into the crevices 
between Shakespeare's and the two adjacent stones, and 
in some way satisfied herself that her single strength 
would suffice to lift the former, in case of need. She 
threw the feeble ray of her lantern up towards the bust, 
but could not make it visible beneath the darkness of 
the vaulted roof. Had she been subject to superstitious 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 1£9 

terrors, it is impossible to conceive of a situation that 
could better entitle her to feel them, for, if Shakespeare's 
ghost would rise at any provocation, it must have shown 
itself then ; but it is my sincere belief, that, if his figure 
had appeared within the scope of her dark-lantern, in his 
slashed doublet and gown, and with his eyes bent on her 
beneath the high, bald forehead, just as we see him in the 
bust, she would have met him fearlessly and controverted 
his claims to the authorship of the plays, to his very face. 
She had taught herself to contemn " Lord Leicester's 
groom " (it was one of her disdainful epithets for the 
world's incomparable poet) so thoroughly, that even his 
disembodied spirit would hardly have found civil treat- 
ment at Miss Bacon's hands. 

Her vigil, though it appears to have had no definite 
object, continued far into the night. Several times she 
heard a low movement in the aisles : a stealthy, dubious 
footfall prowling about in the darkness, now here, now 
there, among the pillars and ancient tombs, as if some 
restless inhabitant of the latter had crept forth to peep 
at the intruder. By and by the clerk made his appear- 
ance, and confessed that he had been watching her ever 
since she entered the church. 

About this time it was that a strange sort of weariness 
seems to have fallen upon her : her toil was all but done, 
her great purpose, as she believed, on the very point of 
accomplishment, when she began to regret that so stu- 
pendous a mission had been imposed on the fragility of a 
woman. Her faith in the new philosophy was as mighty 
as ever, and so was her confidence, in her own adequate 
development of it, now about to be given to the world ; 
yet she wished, or fancied so, that it might never have 
been her duty to achieve this unparalleled task, and to 
stagger feebly forward under her immense burden of re- 
6* i 



130 EECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

sponsibility and renown. So far as her personal concern 
in the matter went, she would gladly have forfeited the 
reward of her patient study and labor for so many years, 
her exile from her country and estrangement from her 
family and friends, her sacrifice of health and all other 
interests to this one pursuit, if she could only find herself 
free to dwell in Stratford and be forgotten. She liked 
the old slumberous town, and awarded the only praise 
that ever I knew her to bestow on Shakespeare, the indi- 
vidual man, by acknowledging that his taste in a residence 
was good, and that he knew how to choose a suitable 
retirement for a person of shy, but genial temperament. 
And at this point, I cease to possess the means of tracing 
her vicissitudes of feeling any further. In consequence 
of some advice which I fancied it my duty to tender, as 
being the only confidant whom she now had in the world, 
I fell under Miss Bacon's most severe and passionate dis- 
pleasure, and was cast off by her in the twinkling of an 
eye. It was a misfortune to which her friends were 
always particularly liable ; but I think that none of them 
ever loved, or even respected, her most ingenuous and 
noble, but likewise most sensitive and tumultuous, char- 
acter the less for it. 

At that time her book was passing through the press. 
Without prejudice to her literary ability, it must be 
allowed that Miss Bacon was wholly unfit to prepare her 
own work for publication, because, among many other 
reasons, she was too thoroughly in earnest to know what 
to leave out. Every leaf and line was sacred, for all had 
been written under so deep a conviction of truth as to 
assume, in her eyes, the aspect of inspiration. A prac- 
tised book-maker, with entire control of her materials, 
would have shaped out a duodecimo volume full of elo- 
quent and ingenious dissertation, — criticisms which quite 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 131 

take the color and pungency out of other people's critical 
remarks on Shakespeare, — philosophic truths which she 
imagined herself to have found at the roots of his concep- 
tions, and which certainly come from no inconsiderable 
depth somewhere. There was a great amount of rubbish, 
which any competent editor would have shovelled out of 
the way. But Miss Bacon thrust the whole bulk of in- 
spiration and nonsense into the press in a lump, and there 
tumbled out a ponderous octavo volume, which fell with 
a dead thump at the feet of the public, and has never 
been picked up. A few persons turned over one or two 
of the leaves, as it lay there, and essayed to kick the vol- 
ume deeper into the mud ; for they were the hack critics 
of the minor periodical press in London, than whom, I 
suppose, though excellent fellows in their way, there are 
no gentlemen in the world less sensible of any sanctity in 
a book, or less likely to recognize an author's heart in it, 
or more utterly careless about bruising, if they do recog- 
nize it. It is their trade. They could not do otherwise. 
I never thought of blaming them. It was not for such 
an Englishman as one of these to get beyond the idea 
that an assault was meditated on England's greatest poet. 
From the scholars and critics of her own country, indeed, 
Miss Bacon might have looked for a worthier apprecia- 
tion, because many of the best of them have higher culti- 
vation, and finer and deeper literary sensibilities than all 
but the very profoundest and brightest of Englishmen. 
But they are not a courageous body of men ; they dare 
not think a truth that has an odor of absurdity, lest they 
should feel themselves bound to speak it out. If any 
American ever wrote a word in her behalf, Miss Bacon 
never knew it, nor did I. Our journalists at once repub- 
lished some of the most brutal vituperations of the Eng- 
lish press, thus pelting their poor countrywoman with 



132 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

stolen mud, without even waiting to know whether the 
ignominy was deserved. And they never have known it, 
to this day, nor ever will. 

The next intelligence that I had of Miss Bacon was 
by a letter from the mayor of Stratford-on-Avon. He 
was a medical man, and wrote both in his official and 
professional character, telling me that an American lady, 
who had recently published what the mayor called a 
" Shakespeare book," was afflicted with insanity. In a 
lucid interval she had referred to me, as a person who 
had some knowledge of her family and affairs. What 
she may have suffered before her intellect gave way, 
we had better not try to imagine. No author had ever 
hoped so confidently as she ; none ever failed more ut- 
terly. A superstitious fancy might suggest that the 
anathema on Shakespeare's tombstone had fallen heavily 
on her head in requital of even the unaccomplished pur- 
pose of disturbing the dust beneath, and that the " Old 
Player" had kept so quietly in his grave, on the night of 
her vigil, because he foresaw how soon and terribly he 
would be avenged. But if that benign spirit takes any 
care or cognizance of such things now, he has surely re- 
quited the injustice that she sought to do him — the high 
justice that she really did — by a tenderness of love and 
pity of which only he could be capable. What matters 
it though she called him by some other name ? He had 
wrought a greater miracle on her than on all the world 
besides. This bewildered enthusiast had recognized a 
depth in the man whom she decried, which scholars, 
critics, and learned societies, devoted to the elucidation 
of his unrivalled scenes, had never imagined to exist 
there. She had paid him the loftiest honor that all these 
ages of renown have been able to accumulate upon his 
memory. And when, not many mouths after the out- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 133 

ward failure of her lifelong object, she passed into the 
better world, I know not why we should hesi.ate to be- 
lieve that the immortal poet may have met her on the 
threshold and led her in, reassuring her with friendly and 
comfortable words, and thanking her (yet with a smile 
of gentle humor in his eves at the thought of certain 
mistaken speculations) for having interpreted him to 
mankind so well. 

I believe that it has been the fate of this remarkable 
book never to have had more than a single reader. I 
myself am acquainted with it only in insulated chapters 
and scattered pages and paragraphs. But, since my re- 
turn to America, a young man of genius and enthusiasm 
has assured me that he has positively read the book from 
beginning to end, and is completely a convert to its doc- 
trines. It belongs to him, therefore, and not to me, — 
whom, in almost the last letter that I received from her, 
she declared unworthy to meddle with her work, — it 
belongs surely to this one individual, who has clone her 
so much justice as to know what she wrote, to place Miss 
Bacon in her due position before the public and posterity. 

This has been too sad a story. To lighten the recol- 
lection of it, I will think of my stroll homeward past 
Charlecote Park, where I beheld the most stately elms, 
singly, in clumps, and in groves, scattered all about in 
the sunniest, shadiest, sleepiest fashion ; so that I could 
not but believe in a lengthened, loitering, drowsy enjoy- 
ment which these trees must have in their existence. 
Diffused over slow-paced centuries, it need not be keen 
nor bubble into thrills and ecstasies, like the momentary 
delights of short-lived human beings. They were civil- 
ized trees, known to man and befriended by him for ages 
past. There is an indescribable difference — as I believe 
I have heretofore endeavored to express — between the 



134 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

tamed, but by no means effete (on the contrary, the 
richer and more luxuriant) nature of England, and the 
rude, shaggy, barbarous nature which offers us its racier 
companionship in America. No less a change has been 
wrought among the wildest creatures that inhabit what 
the English call their forests. By and by, among those 
refined and venerable trees, 1 saw a large herd of deer, 
mostly reclining, but some standing in picturesque groups, 
while the stags threw their large antlers aloft, as if they 
had been taught to make themselves tributary to the 
scenic effect. Some were running fleetly about, vanish- 
ing from light into shadow and glancing forth again, with 
here and there a little fawn careering at its mother's 
heels. These deer are almost in the same relation to the 
wild, natural state of their kind that the trees of an Eng- 
lish park hold to the rugged growth of an American for- 
est. They have held a certain intercourse with man for 
immemorial years ; and, most probably, the stag that 
Shakespeare killed was one of the progenitors of this 
very herd, and may himself have been a partly civilized 
and humanized deer, though in a less degree than these 
remote posterity. They are a little wilder than sheep, 
but they do not snuff the air at the approach of human 
beings, nor evince much alarm at their pretty close 
proximity ; although if you continue to advance, they 
toss their heads and take to their heels in a kind of 
mimic terror, or something akin to feminine skittishness, 
with a dim remembrance or tradition, as it were, of their 
having come of a wild stock. They have so long been 
fed and protected by man, that they must have lost many 
of their native instincts, and, I suppose, could not live 
comfortably through even an English winter without 
human help. One is sensible of a gentle scorn at them 
for such dependency, but feels none the less kindly dis- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 135 

posed towards the half-domesticated race ; and it may 
have been his observation of these tamer characteristics 
in the Charlecote herd that suggested to Shakespeare the 
tender and pitiful description of a wounded stag, in "As 
You Like It." 

At a distance of some hundreds of yards from Charle- 
cote Hall, and almost hidden by the trees between it and 
the roadside, is an old brick archway and porter's lodge. 
In connection with this entrance there appears to have 
been a wall and an ancient moat, the latter of which is 
still visible, a shallow, grassy scoop along the base of an 
embankment of the lawn. About fifty yards within the 
gateway stands the house, forming three sides of a square, 
with three gables in a row on the front, and on each of 
the two wings; and there arc several towers and turrets 
at the angles, together with projecting windows, antique 
balconies, and other quaint ornaments suitable to the half- 
Gothic taste in which the edifice was built. Over the 
gateway is the Lucy coat-of-arms, emblazoned in its 
proper colors. The mansion dates from the early days 
of Elizabeth, and probably looked very much the same 
as now when Shakespeare was brought before Sir Thomas 
Lucy for outrages among his deer. The impression is 
not that of gray antiquity, but of stable and time-honored 
gentility, still as vital as ever. 

It is a most delightful place. All about the house 
and domain there is a perfection of comfort and domestic 
taste, an amplitude of convenience, which could have 
been brought about only by the slow ingenuity and labor 
of many successive generations, intent upon adding all 
possible improvement to the home where years gone by 
and years to come give a sort of permanence to the in- 
tangible present. An American is sometimes tempted 
to fancy that only by this long process can real homes be 



136 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

produced. One man's lifetime is not enough for the ac- 
complishment of such a work of art and nature, almost 
the greatest merely temporary one that is confided to 
him ; too little, at any rate, — yet perhaps too long 
when he is discouraged by the idea that he must make 
his house warm and delightful for a miscellaneous race 
of successors, of whom the one thing certain is, that his 
own grandchildren will not be among them. Such repin- 
ings as are here suggested, however, come only from the 
fact, that, bred in English habits of thought, as most of us 
are, we have not yet modified our instincts to the neces- 
sities of our new forms of life. A lodging in a wigwam 
or under a tent has really as many advantages, when we 
come to know them, as a home beneath the roof-tree of 
Charlecote Hall. But, alas ! our philosophers have not 
yet taught us what is best, nor have our poets sung us 
what is beaut ifulest, in the kind of life that we must 
lead ; and therefore we still read the old English wisdom, 
and harp upon the ancient strings. And thence it hap- 
pens, that, when we look at a time-honored hall, it seems 
more possible for men who inherit such a home, than for 
ourselves, to lead noble and graceful lives, quietly doing 
good and lovely things as their daily work, and achieving 
deeds of simple greatness when circumstances recpiire 
them. I sometimes apprehend that our institutions may 
perish before we shall have discovered the most precious 
of the possibilities which they involve. 




LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 



m 



PTER my first visit to Leamington Spa, I went 
by an indirect route to Licli field, and put up at 
the Black Swan. Had I known where to find 
it, I would much rather have established myself at the 
inn formerly kept by the worthy Mr. Boniface, so famous 
for his ale in Earquhar's time. The Black Swan is an 
old-fashioned hotel, its street-front being penetrated by 
an arched passage, in either side of which is an entrance- 
door to the different parts of the house, and through 
which, and over the large stones of its pavement, all 
vehicles and horsemen rumble and clatter into an enclosed 
court-yard, with a thunderous uproar among the con- 
tiguous rooms and chambers. I appeared to be the only 
guest of the spacious establishment, but may have had a 
few fellow-lodgers hidden in their separate parlors, and 
utterly eschewing that community of interests which is 
the characteristic feature of life in an American hotel. 
At any rate, I had the great, dull, dingy, and dreary 
coffee-room, with its heavy old mahogany chairs and 
tables, all to myself, and not a soul to exchange a word 
with, except the waiter, who, like most of his class in 
England, had evidently left his conversational abilities 
uncultivated. No former practice of solitary living, nor 
habits of reticence, nor well-tested self-dependence for 



138 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

occupation of mind and amusement, can quite avail, as 
I now proved, to dissipate the ponderous gloom of an 
English coffee-room under such circumstances as these, 
with no bonk at hand save the county-directory, nor any 
newspaper but a torn local journal of five days ago. So 
I buried myself, betimes, in a huge heap of ancient 
feathers (there is no other kind of bed. in these old 
inns), let my head sink into an unsubstantial pillow, and 
slept a stifled sleep, infested with such a fragmentary 
confusion of dreams that I took them to be a medley, 
compounded of the night-troubles of all my predecessors 
in that same unrestful couch. And when I awoke, the 
musty odor of a bygone century was in my nostrils, — 
a faint, elusive smell, of which I never had any con- 
ception before crossing the Atlantic. 

In the morning, after a mutton-chop and a cup of chic- 
cory in the dusky coffee-room, I went forth and bewil- 
dered myself a little while among the crooked streets, in 
quest of one or two objects that had chiefly attracted me 
to the spot. The city is of very ancient date, and its 
name in the old Saxon tongue has a dismal import that 
would apply well, in these days and forever hencefor- 
ward, to many an unhappy locality in our native land. 
Lichfield signifies "The Field of the D.^ad Bodies," — 
an epithet, however, which the town did not assume in 
remembrance of a battle, but which probably sprung up 
by a natural process, like a sprig of rue or other fune- 
real weed, out of the graves of two princely brothers, 
sons of a pagan king of Mercia, who were converted 
by St. Chad, and afterwards martyred for their Chris- 
tian faith. Nevertheless, I was but little interested in 
the legends of the remote antiquity of Lichfield, being 
drawn thither partly to see its beautiful cathedral, and 
still more, I believe, because it was the birthplace of 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 139 

Dr. Johnson, with whose sturdy English character I 
became acquainted, at a very early period of my life, 
through the good offices of Mr. Boswell. In truth, he 
seems as familiar to my recollection, and almost as vivid 
in his personal aspect to my mind's eye, as the kindly 
figure of my own grandfather. It is only a solitary 
child, — left much to such wild modes of culture as he 
chooses for himself while yet ignorant what culture 
means, standing on tiptoe to pull down books from no 
very lofty shelf, and then shutting himself up, as it were, 
between the leaves, going astray through the volume 
at his own pleasure, and comprehending it rather by his 
sensibilities and affections than his intellect, — that child 
is the only student that ever gets the sort of intimacy 
which I am now thinking of, with a literary personage. 
I do not remember, indeed, ever caring much about 
any of the stalwart Doctor's grandiloquent productions, 
except his two stern and masculine poems, "London," 
and " The Vanity of Human Wishes " ; it was as a 
man, a talker, and a humorist, that I knew and loved 
him, appreciating many of his qualities perhaps more 
thoroughly than I do now, though never seeking to put 
my instinctive perception of his character into language. 

Beyond all question, I might have had a wiser friend 
than he. The atmosphere in which alone he breathed 
was dense ; his awful dread of death showed how much 
muddy imperfection was to be cleansed out of him, 
before he could be capable of spiritual existence ; he 
meddled only with the surface of life, and never cared 
to penetrate further than to ploughshare depth ; his very 
sense and sagacity were but a one-eyed clear-sightedness. 
I laughed at him, sometimes, standing beside his knee. 
And yet, considering that my native propensities were 
towards Fairy Land, and also how much yeast is gen- 



140 LICHFIELD AND LTTOXETEIl. 

erally mixed up with, the mental sustenance of a New- 
Englander, it may not have been altogether amiss, in 
those childish and boyish days, to keep pace with this 
heavy-footed traveller and feed on the gross diet that he 
carried in his knapsack. It is wholesome food even now. 
And, then, how English ! Many of the latent sympathies 
that enabled me to enjoy the Old Country so well, and 
that so readily amalgamated themselves with the Amer- 
ican ideas that seemed most adverse to them, may have 
been derived from, or fostered and kept alive by, the 
great English moralist. Never was a descriptive epithet 
more nicely appropriate than that ! Dr. Johnson's mo- 
rality was as English an article as a beefsteak. 

The city of Lichfield (only the cathedral-towns are 
called cities, in England) stands on an ascending site. 
It has not so many old gabled houses as Coventry, for 
example, but still enough to gratify an American appetite 
for the antiquities of domestic architecture. The people, 
too, have an old-fashioned way with them, and stare at 
the passing visitor, as if the railway had not yet quite 
accustomed them to the novelty of strange faces moving 
along their ancient sidewalks. The old women whom I 
met, in several instances, dropt me a courtesy ; and as 
they were of decent and comfortable exterior, and kept 
quietly on their way without pause or further greeting, 
it certainly was not allowable to interpret their little act 
of respect as a modest method of asking for sixpence ; so 
that I had the pleasure of considering it a remnant of the 
reverential and hospitable manners of elder times, when 
the rare presence of a stranger might be deemed worth a 
general acknowledgment. Positively, coming from such 
humble sources, I took it all the more as a welcome on 
behalf of the inhabitants, and would not have exchanged 
it for an invitation from the mayor and magistrates to a 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 141 

public dinner. Yet I wish, merely for the experiment's 
sake, that I could have emboldened myself to hold out 
the aforesaid sixpence to at least one of the old ladies. 

In my wanderings about town, I came to an artificial 
piece of water, called the Minster Pool. It fills the im- 
mense cavity in a ledge of rock, whence the building- 
materials of the cathedral were quarried out a great 
many centuries ago. I should never have guessed the 
little lake to be of man's creation, so very pretty and 
quietly picturesque an object has it grown to be, with its 
green banks, and the old trees hanging over its glassy 
surface, in which you may see reflected some of the bat- 
tlements of the majestic structure that once lay here in 
unshaped stone. Some little children stood on the edge 
of the Pool, angling with pin-hooks ; and the scene re- 
minded me (though really to be quite fair with the 
reader, the gist of the analogy has now escaped me) 
of that mysterious lake in the Arabian Nights, which had 
once been a palace and a city, and where a fisherman 
used to pull out the former inhabitants in the guise of 
enchanted fishes. There is no need of fanciful associa- 
tions to make the spot interesting. It was in the porch 
of one of the houses, in the street that runs beside the 
Minster Pool, that Lord Brooke was slain, in the time 
of the Parliamentary war, by a shot from the battlements 
of the cathedral, which was then held by the Royalists 
as a fortress. The incident is commemorated by an in- 
scription on a stone, inlaid into the wall of the house. 

I know not what rank the Cathedral of Lichfield holds 
among its sister edifices in England, as a piece of mag- 
nificent architecture. Except that of Chester (the grim 
and simple nave of which stands yet unrivalled in my 
memory), and one or two small ones in North Wales, 
hardly worthy of the name of cathedrals, it was the first 



142 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

that I had seen. To my uninstructed vision, it seemed 
the object best worth gazing at in the whole world ; and 
now, after beholding a great many more, I remember it 
with less prodigal admiration only because others are 
as magnificent as itself. The traces remaining in my 
memory represent it as airy rather than massive. A 
multitude of beautiful shapes appeared to be compre- 
hended within its single outline ; it was a kind of kalei- 
doscopic mystery, so rich a variety of aspects did it 
assume from each altered point of view, through the 
presentation of a different face, and the rearrangement 
of its peaks and pinnacles and the three battle mented 
towers, with the spires that shot heavenward from all 
three, but one loftier than its fellows. Thus it im- 
pressed you, at every change, as a newly created struc- 
ture of the passing moment, in which yet you lovingly 
recognized the half-vanished structure of the instant 
before, and felt, moreover, a joyful faith in the inde- 
structible existence of all this cloudlike vicissitude. A 
Gothic cathedral is surely the most wonderful work 
which mortal man has yet achieved, so vast, so intricate, 
and so profoundly simple, with such strange, delightful 
recesses in its grand figure, so difficult to comprehend 
within one idea, and yet all so consonant that it ulti- 
mately draws the beholder and his universe into its har- 
mony. It is the only thing in the world that is vast 
enough and rich enough. 

Not that I felt, or was worthy to feel, an unmingled 
enjoyment in gazing at this wonder. I could not elevate 
myself to its spiritual height, any more than I could have 
climbed from the ground to the summit of one of its pin- 
nacles. Ascending but a little way, I continually fell 
back and lay in a kind of despair, conscious that a flood 
of uncomprehended beauty was pouring down upon me, 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 14-3 

of which I could appropriate only the minutest portion. 
After a hundred years, incalculably as my higher sympa- 
thies might be invigorated by so divine an employment, 
I should still be a gazer from below and at an awful dis- 
tance, as yet remotely excluded from the interior mystery. 
But it was something gained, even to have that painful 
sense of my own limitations, and that half-smothered 
yearning to soar beyond them. The cathedral showed 
me how earthly I was, but yet whispered deeply of im- 
mortality. After all, this was probably the best lesson 
that it could bestow, and, taking it as thoroughly as 
possible home to my heart, I was fain to be content. If 
the truth must be told, my ill-trained enthusiasm soon 
nagged, and I began to lose the vision of a spiritual or 
ideal edifice behind the time-worn and weather-stained 
front of the actual structure. Whenever that is the case, 
it is most reverential to look another way; but the mood 
disposes one to minute investigation, and I took advan- 
tage of it to examine the intricate and multitudinous 
adornment that was lavished on the exterior wall of this 
great church. Everywhere, there were empty niches 
where statues had been thrown down, and here and 
there a statue still lingered in its niche ; and over the 
chief entrance, and extending across the whole breadth 
of the building, was a row of angels, sainted personages, 
martyrs, and kings, sculptured in reddish stone. Being 
much corroded by the moist English atmosphere, during 
four or five hundred winters that they had stood there, 
these benign and majestic figures perversely put me in 
mind of the appearance of a sugar image, after a child 
has been holding it in his mouth. The venerable infant 
Time has evidently found them sweet morsels. 

Inside of the minster there is a long and lofty nave, 
transepts of the same height, and side-aisles and chapels, 



144 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

dim nooks of holiness, where in Catholic limes the lamps 
Mere continually burning before the richly decorated 
shrines of saints. In the audacity of my ignorance, as 
I humbly acknowledge it to have been, I criticised this 
great interior as too much broken into compartments, 
and shorn of half its rightful impressiveness by the inter- 
position of a screen betwixt the nave and chancel. It 
did not spread itself in breadth, but ascended to the roof 
in lofty narrowness. One large body of worshippers 
might have knelt down in the nave, others in each of the 
transepts, and smaller ones in the side-aisles, besides an 
indefinite number of esoteric enthusiasts in the myste- 
rious sanctities beyond the screen. Thus it seemed to 
typify the exclusiveness of sects rather than the world- 
wide hospitality of genuine religion. I had imagined a 
cathedral with a scope more vast. These Gothic aisles, 
with their groined arches overhead, supported by clus- 
tered pillars in long vistas up and down, were venerable 
and magnificent, but included too much of the twilight 
of that monkish gloom out of which they grew. It is no 
matter whether I ever came to a more satisfactory appre- 
ciation of this kind of architecture ; the only value of my 
strictures being to show the folly of looking at noble 
objects in the wrong mood, and the absurdity of a new 
visitant pretending to hold any opinion whatever on 
such subjects, instead of surrendering himself to the old 
builder's influence with childlike simplicity. 

A great deal of white marble decorates the old stone- 
work of the aisles, in the shape of altars, obelisks, sar- 
cophagi, and busts. Most of these memorials are com- 
memorative of people locally distinguished, especially 
the deans and canons of the Cathedral, with their rela- 
tives and families; and I found but two monuments 
of personages whom 1 had ever heard of, — one being 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 115 

Gilbert Walmesley and the other Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu, a literary acquaintance of my boyhood. It 
was really pleasant to meet her there ; for after a friend 
has lain in the grave far into the second century, she 
would be unreasonable to require any melancholy emo- 
tions in a chance interview at her tombstone. It adds a 
rich charm to sacred edifices, this time-honored custom 
of burial in churches, after a few years, at least, when the 
mortal remains have turned to dust beneath the pave- 
ment, and the quaint devices and inscriptions still speak 
to you above. The statues, that stood or reclined in 
several recesses of the Cathedral, had a kind of life, 
and I regarded theni with an odd sort of deference, as if 
they were privileged denizens of the precinct. It was 
singular, too, how the memorial of the latest buried per- 
son, the man whose features weie familiar in the streets 
of Lichfield only yesterday, seemed precisely as much at 
home here as his mediaeval predecessors. Henceforward 
he belonged to the Cathedral like one of its original pil- 
lars. Methought this impression in my fancy might be 
the shadow of a spiritual fact. The dying melt into the 
great multitude of the Departed as quietly as a drop of 
water into the ocean, and, it may be are conscious of no 
uufamiliarity with their new circumstances, but immedi- 
ately become aware of an insufferable strangeness iu the 
world which they have quitted. Death has not taken 
them away, but brought them home. 

The vicissitudes and mischances of sublunary affairs, 
however, have not ceased to attend upon these marble 
inhabitants ; for I saw the upper fragment of a sculp- 
tured lady, in a very old-fashioned garb, the lower half 
of whom had doubtless been demolished by Cromwell's 
soldiers when they took the Minster by storm. And 
there lies the remnant of this devout lady on her slab, 
7 j 



146 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETEB. 

ever since the outrage, as for centuries before, with a 
countenance of divine serenity and her hands clasped in 
prayer, symbolizing a depth of religious faith which no 
earthly turmoil or calamity could disturb. Another 
piece of sculpture (apparently a favorite subject in the 
Middle Ages, for I have seen several like it in other cathe- 
drals) was a reclining skeleton, as faitlifully representing 
an open-work of bones as could well be expected m a 
solid block of marble, and at a period, moreover, when 
the mysteries of the human frame were rather to be 
guessed at than revealed. Whatever the anatomical de- 
fects of his production, the old sculptor Lad succeeded 
in making it ghastly beyond measure. How much mis- 
chief has been wrought upon us by this invariable gloom 
of the Gothic imagination ; flinging itself like a death- 
scented pall over our conceptions of the future state, 
smothering our hopes, hiding our sky, and inducing dis- 
mal efforts to raise the harvest of immortality out of what 
is most opposite to it, — the grave ! 

The Cathedral service is performed twice every day : 
at ten o'clock and at four. When I first entered, the 
choristers (young and old, but mostly, I think, boys, with 
voices inexpressibly sweet and clear, and as fresh as bird- 
notes) were just winding up their harmonious labors, and 
soon came thronging through a side-door from the chan- 
cel into the nave. They were all dressed in long white 
robes, and looked like a peculiar order of beings, created 
on purpose to hover between the roof and pavement 
of that dim, consecrated edifice, and illuminate it with 
divine melodies, reposing themselves, meanwhile, on the 
heavy grandeur of the organ-tones like cherubs on a 
golden cloud. All at once, however, one of the cherubic 
multitude pulled oif his white gown, thus transforming 
himself before my very eyes into a commonplace youth 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 147 

of the day, in modern frock-coat and trousers of a de- 
cidedly provincial cut. This absurd little incident, I 
verily believe, had a sinister effect in putting me ;it odds 
with the proper influences of the Cathedral, nor could I 
quite recover a suitable frame of mind during my stay 
there. But, emerging into the open air, I began to be 
sensible that I had left a magnificent interior behind me, 
and I have never quite lost the perception and enjoyment 
of it in these intervening years. 

A large space in the immediate neighborhood of the 
Cathedral is called the Close, and comprises beautifully 
kept lawns and a shadowy walk bordered by the dwell- 
ings of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the diocese. All 
this row of episcopal, canonical, and clerical residences 
has an air of the deepest quiet, repose, and well-protected 
though not inaccessible seclusion. They teemed capable 
of including everything that a saint ccsdd desire, and a 
great many more things than most of rvs sinners generally 
succeed in acquiring. Their most marked feature is a 
dignified comfort, looking as if no disturbance or vulgar 
intrusiveness could ever cross their thresholds, encroach 
upon their ornamented lawns, or straggle into the beau- 
tiful gardens that surround them with flower-beds and 
rich clumps of shrubbery. The episcopal palace is a 
stately mansion of stone, built somewhat in the Italian 
style, and bearing on its front the figures 1687, as the 
date of its erection. A large edifice of brick, which, if I 
remember, stood next to the palace, I took to be the resi- 
dence of the second dignitary of the Cathedral ; and, in 
that case, it must have been the youthful home of Addison, 
whose father was Dean of Lichfield. I tried to fancy his 
figure on the delightful walk that extends in front of those 
priestly abodes, from which and the interior lawns it is 
separated by an open-work iron fence, lined with rich old 



148 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

shrubbery, and overarched by a minster-aisle of venera- 
ble trees. This path is haunted by the shades of famous 
personages who have formerly trodden it, Johnson must 
have been familiar with it, both as a boy, and in his sub- 
sequent visits to Lichfield, an illustrious old man. Miss 
Seward, connected with so many literary reminiscences, 
lived in one of the adjacent houses. Tradition says that 
it was a favorite spot of Major Andre, who used to pace 
to and fro under these trees waiting, perhaps, to catch a 
last angel-glimpse of Honoria Sneyd, before he crossed 
the ocean to encounter his dismal doom from an Ameri- 
can court-martial. David Garrick, no doubt, scampered 
along the path in his boyish days, and, if he was an early 
student of the drama, must often have thought of those 
two airy characters of the "Beaux' Stratagem," Archer 
and Annwell, who, on this very ground, after attending 
service at the cathedral, contrive to make acquaintance 
with the ladies of the comedy. These creatures of mere 
fiction have as positive a substance now as the sturdy old 
figure of Johnson himself. They live, while realities have 
died. The shadowy walk still glistens with their gold- 
embroidered memories. 

Seeking for Johnson's birthplace, I found it in St. 
Mary's Square, which is not so much a square as the 
mere widening of a street, The house is tall and thin, 
of three stories, with a square front and a roof rising 
steep and high. On a side-view, the building looks as 
if it had been cut in two in the midst, there being no 
slope of the roof on that side. A ladder slanted against 
the wall, and a painter was giving a livelier hue to the 
plaster. In a corner-room of the basement, where old 
Michael Johnson may be supposed to have sold books, is 
now what we should call a dry-goods store, or, according 
to the English phrase, a mercer's and haberdasher's shop. 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 149 

The house lias a private entrance on a cross-street, the 
door being accessible by several much-worn stone steps, 
which are bordered by an iron balustrade. I set my 
foot on the steps and laid my hand on the balustrade, 
where Johnson's hand and foot must many a time have 
been, and ascending to the door, I knocked once, and 
again, and again, and got no admittance. Going round 
to the shop-entrance, I tried to open it, but found it as 
fast bolted as the gate of Paradise. It is mortifying to 
be so balked in one's little enthusiasms ; but looking 
round in quest of somebody to make inquiries of, I was a 
good deal consoled by the sight of Dr. Johnson himself, 
who happened, just at that moment, to be sitting at his 
ease nearly in the middle of St. Mary's Square, with his 
face turned towards his father's house. 

Of course, it being almost fourscore years since the 
Doctor laid aside his weary bulk of flesh, together with 
the ponderous melancholy that had so long weighed him 
down, the intelligent reader will at once comprehend 
that he was marble in his substance, and seated in a mar- 
ble chair, on an elevated stone pedestal. In short, it 
was a statue, sculptured by Lucas, and placed here in 
1838, at the expense of Dr. Law, the reverend chancel- 
lor of the diocese. 

The figure is colossal (though perhaps not much more 
so than the mountainous Doctor himself) and looks down 
upon the spectator from its pedestal of ten or twelve 
feet high, with a broad and heavy benignity of aspect, 
very like in feature to Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of 
Johnson, but calmer and sweeter in expression. Several 
big books are piled up beneath his chair, and, if I mis- 
take not, he holds a volume in his hand, thus blinking 
forth at the world out of his learned abstraction, owl- 
like, yet benevolent at heart. The statue is immensely 



150 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

massive, a vast ponderosity of stone, not finely spiritual- 
ized, nor, indeed, fully humanized, but rather resem- 
bling a great stone-bowlder than a man. You must look 
with the eyes of faith and sympathy, or, possibly, you 
might lose the human being altogether, and find only a 
big stone within your mental grasp. On the pedestal 
are three bas-reliefs. In the first, Johnson is represent- 
ed as hardly more than a baby, bestriding an old man's 
shoulders, resting his chin on the bald head which he 
embraces with his little arms, and listening earnestly to 
the High-Church eloquence of Dr. Sachevcrcll. In the 
second tablet, he is seen riding to school on the shoul- 
ders of two of his comrades, while another boy supports 
him in the rear. 

The third bas-relief possesses, to my mind, a great deal 
of pathos, to which my appreciative faculty is probably 
the more alive, because I have always been profoundly 
impressed by the incident here commemorated, and long 
ago tried to tell it for the behoof of childish readers. It 
shows Johnson in the market-place of Uttoxeter, doing 
penance for an act of disobedience to his father, com- 
mitted fifty years before. He stands bareheaded, a ven- 
erable figure, and a countenance extremely sad and woe- 
begone, with the wind and rain driving hard against him, 
and thus helping to suggest to the spectator the gloom 
of his inward state. Some market-people and children 
gaze awe-stricken into his face, and an aged man and 
woman, with clasped and uplifted hands, seem to be 
praying for him. These latter personages (whose intro- 
duction by the artist is none the less effective, because, 
in queer proximity, there are some commodities of mar- 
ket-day in the shape of living ducks and dead poultry) 
I interpreted to represent the spirits of Johnson's father 
and mother, lending what aid they could to lighten his 
half-century's burden of remorse. 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 151 

1 hud never beard of the ahove-described piece of 
sculpture before ; it appears to have no reputation as a 
work of art, nor am I at all positive that it deserves any. 
For me, however, it did as much as sculpture could, un- 
der the circumstances, even if the artist of the Libyan 
Sibyl had wrought it, by reviving- my interest in the 
sturdy old Englishman, and particularly by freshening 
my perception of a wonderful beauty and pathetic ten- 
derness in the incident of the penance. So, the next 
day, I left Lichfield for Uttoxeter, on one of the few 
purely sentimental pilgrimages that I ever undertook, to 
sec the very spot where Johnson had stood. Boswcll, I 
think, speaks of the town (its name is pronounced Yute- 
oxeter) as being about nine miles off from Lichfield," but 
the county-map would indicate a greater distance; and 
by rail, passing from one line to another, it is as much 
as eighteen miles. I have always had an idea of old 
Michael Johnson sending his literary merchandise by 
carrier's wagon, journeying to Uttoxeter afoot on mar- 
ket-day morning, selling books through the busy hours, 
and returning to Lichfield at night. This could not pos- 
sibly have been the case. 

Arriving at the Uttoxeter station, the first objects that 
I saw, with a green field or two between them and me, 
were the tower and gray steeple of a church, rising 
among red-tiled roofs and a few scattered trees. A 
very short walk takes you from the station up into the 
town. It had been my previous impression that the 
market-place of Uttoxeter lay immediately roundabout 
the church ; and, if I remember the narrative aright, 
Johnson, or Boswell in his behalf, describes his father's 
book-stall as standing in the market-place, close beside 
the sacred edifice. It is impossible for me to say what 
changes may have occurred in the topography of the 



152 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

town, during almost a century and a half since Michael 
Johnson retired from business, and ninety years, at least, 
since his son's penance was performed. But the church 
has now merely a street of ordinary width passing around 
it, while the market-place, though near at hand, neither 
forms a part of it nor is really contiguous, nor would its 
throng and bustle be apt to overflow their boundaries and 
surge against the churchyard and the old gray tower. 
Nevertheless, a walk of a minute or two brings a person 
from the centre of the market-place to the church-door; 
and Michael Johnson might very conveniently have lo- 
cated his stall and laid out his literary ware in the 
corner at the tower's base ; better there, indeed, than in 
the busy centre of an agricultural market. But the pic- 
turesque arrangement and full impressiveuess of the story 
absolutely require that Johnson shall not have done his 
penance in a corner, ever so little retired, but shall have 
been the very nucleus of the crowd, — the midmost man 
of the market-place, — a central image of Memory and 
Remorse, contrasting with and overpowering the petty 
materialism around him. He himself, having the force 
to throw vitality and truth into what persons differently 
constituted might reckon a mere external ceremoiry, and 
an absurd one, could not have failed to see this necessity. 
I am resolved, therefore, that the true site of Dr. John- 
son's penance was in the middle of the market-place. 

That important portion of the town is a rather spacious 
and irregularly shaped vacuity, surrounded by houses and 
shops, snnc of them old, with red-tiled roofs, others 
wearing a pretence of newness, but probably as old in 
their inner substance as the rest. The people of Uttox- 
eter seemed very idle in the warm summer-day, and 
were scattered in little groups along the sidewalks, 
leisurely chatting with one another, and often turning 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 153 

about to take a deliberate stare at my humble self; 
insomuch that I felt as if my genuine sympathy for the 
illustrious penitent, and my many reflections about him, 
must have imbued me with some of his own singularity 
of mien. If their great-grandfathers were such redoubt- 
able starers in the Doctor's day, his penance was no 
light one. This curiosity indicates a paucity of visitors 
to the little town, except for market purposes, and I 
question if Uttoxeter ever saw an American before. 
The only other thing that greatly impressed me was the 
abundance of public-houses, one at every step or two-, 
lied Lions, White Harts, Bulls' Heads, Mitres, Cross 
Keys, and I know not what besides. These are prob- 
ably for the accommodation of the farmers and peasantry 
of the neighborhood on market-day, and content them- 
selves with a very meagre business on other days of the 
week. At any rate, I was the only guest in Uttoxeter 
at the period of my visit, and had but an infinitesimal 
portion of patronage to distribute among such a multi- 
tude of inns. The reader, however, will possibly be 
scandalized to learn what was the first, and, indeed, the 
only important affair that I attended to, after coming so 
far to indulge a solemn and high emotion, and standing 
now on the very spot where my pious errand should have 
been consummated. I stepped into one of the rustic 
hostleries and got my dinner, — bacon and greens, some 
mutton-chops, juicier and more delectable than all America 
could serve up at the President's table, and a gooseberry 
pudding; a sufficient meal for six yeomen, and good 
enough for a prince, besides a pitcher of foaming ale, the 
whole at the pitiful small charge of eighteen-pence ! 

Dr. Johnson would have forgiven me, for nobody had 
a heartier faith in beef and mutton than himself. And 
as regards my lack of sentiment in eating my dinner, — 
7* 



1 5 i L1CHFTELD AND UTTOXETER. 

it was the wisest thing I had done that day. A sensible 
man had better not let himself be betrayed into these 
attempts to realize the things which he has dreamed 
about, and which, when they cease to be purely ideal in 
his mind, will have lost the truest of their truth, the lofti- 
est and profoundest part of their power over his sym- 
pathies. Facts, as we really find them, whatever poetry 
they may involve, are covered with a stony excrescence 
of prose, resembling the crust on a beautiful sea-shell, 
and they never show their most delicate and divinest 
colors until we shall have dissolved away their grosser 
actualities by steeping them long in a powerful men- 
struum of thought. And seeking to actualize them 
again, we do but renew the crust. If this were other- 
wise, — if the moral sublimity of a great fact depended 
in any degree on its garb of external circumstances, 
things which change and decay, — it could not itself be 
immortal and ubiquitous, and only a brief point of time 
and a little neighborhood would be spiritually nourished 
by its grandeur and beauty. 

Such were a few of the reflections which I mingled 
with my ale, as I remember to have seen an old quaffer 
of that excellent licpior stir up his cup with a sprig of 
some bitter and fragrant herb. Meanwhile I found my- 
self still haunted by a desire to get a definite result out 
of my visit to Uttoxcter. The hospitable inn was called 
the Nag's Head, and standing beside the market-place, 
was as likely as any other to have entertained old 
Michael Johnson in the days when he used to come 
hither to sell books. He, perhaps, had dined on bacon 
and greens, and drunk his ale, and smoked his pipe, in 
the very room where I now sat, which was a low, ancient 
room, certainly much older than Queen Anne's time, 
with a red-brick floor, and a white-washed ceiling, trav- 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 155 

ersed by bare, rough beams, the whole in the rudest 
fashion, but extremely neat. Neither did it lack orna- 
ment, the walls being hung with colored engravings of 
prize oxen and other pretty prints, and the mantel-piece 
adorned with earthen-ware figures of shepherdesses in 
the Arcadian taste of long ago. Michael Johnson's eyes 
might have rested on that selfsame earthen image, to ex- 
amine which more closely I had just crossed the brick 
pavement of the room. And, sitting down again, still as 
I sipped my ale, I glanced through the open window 
into the sunny market-place, and wished that I could 
honestly fix on one spot rather than another, as likely to 
have been the holy site where Johnson stood to do his 
penance. 

How strange and stupid it is that tradition should not 
have marked and kept in mind the very place ! How 
shameful (nothing less than that) that there should be no 
local memorial of this incident, as beautiful and touching 
a passage as can be cited out of any human life ! No 
inscription of it, almost as sacred as a verse of Scripture 
on the wall of the church ! No statue of the venerable 
and illustrious penitent in the market-place to throw a 
wholesome awe over its earthliness, its frauds and petty 
wrongs of which the benumbed fingers of conscience can 
make no record, its selfish competition of each man with 
his brother or his neighbor, its traffic of soul-substance 
for a little worldly gain ! Such a statue, if the piety of 
the people did not raise it, might almost have been ex- 
pected to grow up out of the pavement of its own accord 
on the spot that had been watered by the rain that 
dripped from Johnson's garments, mingled with his re- 
morseful tears. 

Long after my visit to Uttoxeter, I was told that there 
were individuals in the town who could have shown me 



156 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

the exact, indubitable spot whore Johnson performed his 
penance. I was assured, moreover, that sufficient inter- 
est was felt in the subject to have induced certain local 
discussions as to the expediency of erecting a memorial. 
With all deference to my polite informant, I surmise that 
there is a mistake, and decline, without further and pre- 
cise evidence, giving credit to either of the above state- 
ments. The inhabitants know nothing, as a matter of 
general interest, about the penance, and care nothing for 
the scene of it. If the clergyman of the parish, for ex- 
ample, had ever heard of it, would he not have used the 
theme, time and again, wherewith to work tenderly and 
profoundly on the souls committed to his charge ? If 
parents were familiar with it, would they not teach it to 
their young ones at the fireside, both to insure reverence 
to their own gray hairs, and to protect the children from 
such unavailing regrets as Johnson bore upon his heart 
for fifty years ? If the site were ascertained, would not 
the pavement thereabouts be worn with reverential foot- 
steps? Would not every town-born child be able to 
direct the pilgrim thither ? While waiting at the station, 
before my departure, I asked a boy who stood near me, 

— an intelligent and gentlemanly lad, twelve or thirteen 
years old, whom I should take to be a clergyman's son, 

— I asked him if he had ever heard the story of Dr. 
Johnson, how he stood an hour doing penance near that 
church, the spire of which rose before us. The boy 
stared and answered, — 

" No ! " 

" Were you born in Uttoxeter? " 
"Yes." 

I inquired if no circumstance such as I had mentioned 
was known or talked about among the inhabitants. 
" No," said the boy ; " not that I ever heard of." 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 



157 



Just think of the absurd little town, knowing nothing 
of the only memorable incident which ever happened 
within its boundaries since the old Britons built it, this 
sad and lovely story, which consecrates the spot (for I 
found it holy to my contemplation, again, as soon as it 
lay behind me) in the heart of a stranger from three 
thousand miles over the sea ! It but confirms what I 
have been saying, that sublime and beautiful facts are 
best understood when etherealized by distance. 




PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 




E set out at a little past -eleven, and made our 
first stage to Manehcstrr. We were by this 
time sufficiently Anglicized to reckon the morn- 
ing a bright and sunny one ; although the May sunshine 
was mingled with water, as it were, and distempered 
with a very bitter east-wind. 

Lancashire is a dreary county (all, at least, except its 
] i illy portions), and I have never passed through it with- 
out wishing myself anywhere but in that particular spot 
where I then happened to be. A few places along our 
route were historically interesting ; as, for example, Bol- 
ton, which was the scene of many remarkable events in 
the Parliamentary War, and in the market-square of 
which one of the Earls of Derby was beheaded. We 
saw, along the wayside, the never-failing green fields, 
hedges, and other monotonous features of an ordinary 
English landscape. There were little factory villages, 
too, or larger towns, with their tall chimneys, and their 
pennons of black smoke, their ugliness of brick-work, 
and their heaps of refuse matter from the furnace, which 
seems to be the only kind of stuff which Nature cannot 
take back to herself and resolve into the elements, when 
man has thrown it aside. These hillocks of waste and 
effete mineral always disfigure the neighborhood of iron- 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 159 

mongering towns, and, even after a considerable antiquity, 
are hardly made decent with a little grass. 

At a quarter to two we left Manchester by the Shef- 
field and Lincoln Railway. The scenery grew rather 
better than that through which we had hitherto passed, 
though still by no means very striking ; for (except in 
the show-districts, such as the Lake country, or Derby- 
shire) English scenery is not particularly well worth look- 
ing at, considered as a spectacle or a picture. It has a 
real, homely charm of its own, no doubt ; and the rich 
verdure, and the thorough finish added by human art, are 
perhaps as attractive to an American eye as any stronger 
feature could be. Our journey, however, between Man- 
chester and Sheffield was not through a rich tract of 
country, but along a valley walled in by bleak, ridgy hills 
extending straight as a rampart, and across black moor- 
lands with here and there a plantation of trees. Some- 
times there were long and gradual ascents, bleak, windy, 
and desolate, conveying the very impression which the 
reader gets from many passages of Miss Bronte's novels, 
and still more from those of her two sisters. Old stone 
or brick farm-houses, and, once in awhile, an old church- 
tower, were visible ; but these are almost too common 
objects to be noticed in an English landscape. 

On a railway, I suspect, what little we do see of the 
country is seen quite amiss, because it was never intended 
to be looked at from any point of view in that straight 
line ; so that it is like looking at the wrong side of a piece 
of tapestry. The old highways and foot-paths were as 
natural as brooks and rivulets, and adapted themselves by 
an inevitable impulse to the physiognomy of the country ; 
and, furthermore, every object within view of them had 
some subtile reference to their curves and undulations ; 
but the line of a railway is perfectly artificial, and puts 



100 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

all precedent things at sixes-and-sevens. At any rate, be 
the cause what it may, there is seldom anything worth 
seeing within the scope of a railway traveller's eye ; and 
if there were, it requires an alert marksman to take a 
flying shot at the picturesque. 

At one of the stations (it was near a village of ancient 
aspect, nestling round a church, on a wide Yorkshire 
moor) I saw a tall old lady in black, who seemed to have 
just alighted from the train. She caught my attention 
by a singular movement of the head, not once only, but 
continually repeated, and at regular intervals, as if she 
were making a stern and solemn protest against some 
action that developed itself before lier eyes, and were 
foreboding terrible disaster, if it should be persisted in. 
Of course, it was nothing more than a paralytic or ner- 
vous affection ; yet one might fancy that, it had its origin 
in some unspeakable wrong, perpetrated half a lifetime 
ago in this old gentlewoman's presence, either against 
herself or somebody whom she loved still better. Her 
features had a wonderful sternness, which, I presume, 
was caused by her habitual effort to compose and keep 
them quiet, and thereby counteract the tendency to para- 
lytic movement. The slow, regular, and inexorable char- 
acter of the motion — her look of force and self-control, 
which had the appearance of rendering it voluntary, while 
yet it was so fateful — have stamped this poor lady's face 
and gesture into my memory ; so that, some dark clay or 
other, I am afraid she will reproduce herself in a dismal 
romance. 

The train stopped a minute or two, to allow the tickets 
to be taken, just before entering the Sheffield station, 
and thence I had a glimpse of the famous town of razors 
and penknives, enveloped in a cloud of its own diffusing. 
My impressions of it are extremely vague and misty, — ■ 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 10 1 

or, rather, smoky : for Sheffield seems to me smokier 
than Manchester, Liverpool, or Birmingham, — smokier 
than all England besides, unless Newcastle be the ex- 
ception. It might have been Pluto's own metropolis, 
shrouded in sulphurous vapor ; and, indeed, our approach 
to it had been by the Valley of the Shadow of Death, 
through a tunnel three miles in length, quite traversing 
the breadth and depth of a mountainous hill. 

After passing Sheffield, the scenery became softer, 
gentler, yet more picturesque. At one point we saw 
what I believe to be the utmost northern verge of Sher- 
wood Forest, — not consisting, however, of thousand- 
year oaks, extant from Robin Hood's days, but of young 
and thriving plantations, which will require a century or 
two of slow English growth to give them much breadth 
of shade. Earl Fitzwilliam's property lies in this neigh- 
borhood, and probably his castle was hidden among some 
soft depth of foliage not far off. Farther onward the 
country grew quite level around us, whereby I judged 
that we must now be in Lincolnshire ; and shortly after 
six o'clock we caught the first glimpse of the Cathedral 
towers, though they loomed scarcely huge enough for 
our preconceived idea of them. But, as wc drew nearer, 
the great edifice began to assert itself, making us ac- 
knowledge it to be larger than our receptivity could 
take in. 

At the railway-station wc found no cab (it being an 
unknown vehicle in Lincoln), but only an omnibus be- 
longing to the Saracen's Head, which the driver recom- 
mended as the best hotel in the city, and took us thither 
accordingly. It received us hospitably, and looked com- 
fortable enough ; though, like the hotels of most old Eng- 
lish towns, it had a musty fragrance of antiquity, such as 
I have smelt in a seldom-opened London church where 

K 



162 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

the broad-aisle is paved with tombstones. The house 
was of an ancient fashion, the entrance into its interior 
court-yard being through an arch, in the side of which is 
the door of the hotel. There are long corridors, an in- 
tricate arrangement of passages, and an up-and-down 
meandering of staircases, amid which it would be no 
marvel to encounter some forgotten guest who had gone 
astray a hundred years ago, and was still seeking for his 
bedroom while the rest of his generation were in their 
graves. There is no exaggerating the confusion of mind 
that seizes upon a stranger in the bewildering geography 
of a great old-fashioned English inn. 

This hotel stands in the principal street of Lincoln, 
and within a very short distance of one of the ancient 
city-gates, which is arched across the public way, with 
a smaller arch for foot-passengers on either side; the 
whole, a gray, time-gnawn, ponderous, shadowy struc- 
ture, through the dark vista of which you look into the 
Middle Ages. The street is narrow, and retains many 
antique peculiarities ; though, unquestionably, English 
domestic architecture has lost its most impressive fea- 
tures, in the course of the last century. In this respect, 
there are finer old towns than Lincoln : Chester, for in- 
stance, and Shrewsbury, — which last is unusually rich 
in those quaint and stately edifices where the gentry of 
the shire used to make their winter abodes, in a provin- 
cial metropolis. Almost every where, nowadays, there is 
a monotony of modern brick or stuccoed fronts, hiding 
houses that are older than ever, but obliterating the 
picturesque antiquity of the street. 

Between seven and eight o'clock (it being still broad 
daylight in these long English days) we set out to pay a 
preliminary visit to the exterior of the Cathedral. Pass- 
ing through the Stone Bow, as the city-gate close by is 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 1 G-3 

called, we ascended a street which grew steeper and nar- 
rower as we advanced, till at last it got to be the steepest 
street I ever climbed, — so steep that any carriage, if left 
to itself, would rattle downward much faster than it could 
possibly be drawn up. Being almost the only hill in Lin- 
colnshire, the inhabitants seem disposed to make the most 
of it. 'The houses on each side had no very remarkable 
aspect, except one with a stone portal and carved orna- 
ments, which is now a dwelling-place for poverty-stricken 
people, but may have been an aristocratic abode in the 
days of the Norman kings, to whom its style of architec- 
ture dates back. This is called the Jewess's House, 
having been inhabited by a woman of that faith who was 
hanged six hundred years ago. 

And still the street grew steeper and steeper. Cer- 
tainly, the Bishop and clergy of Lincoln ought not to be 
fat men, but of very spiritual, saint-like, almost angelic 
habit, if it be a frequent part, of their ecclesiastical duty 
to climb this hill ; for it is a real penance, and was prob- 
ably performed as such, and groaned over accordingly, in 
monkish times. Formerly, on the day of his installation, 
the Bishop used to ascend the hill barefoot, and was 
doubtless cheered and invigorated by looking upward to 
the grandeur that was to console him for the humility of 
his approach. We, likewise, were beckoned onward by 
glimpses of the Cathedral towers, and, finally, attaining 
an open scpiare on the summit, we saw an old Gothic 
gateway to the left hand, and another to the right. The 
latter had apparently been a part of the exterior defences 
of the Cathedral, at a time when the edifice was fortified. 
The west front rose behind. We passed through one of 
the side-arches of the Gothic portal, and found ourselves 
in the Cathedral Close, a wide, level space, where the 
great old Minster has fair room to sit, looking down on 



164 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

the ancient structures that surround it, all of which, in 
former days, were the habitations of its dignitaries and 
officers. Some of them are still occupied as such, though 
others are in too neglected and dilapidated a state to 
seem worthy of so splendid an establishment. Unless it 
be Salisbury Close, however (which is incomparably rich 
as regards the old residences that belong to it), I remem- 
ber no more comfort ably picturesque precincts round any 
other cathedral. But, in truth, almost every cathedral 
close, in turn, has seemed to me the loveliest, cosiest, 
safest, least wind-shaken, most decorous, and most en- 
joyable shelter that ever the thrift and selfishness of 
mortal man contrived for himself. How delightful, to 
combine all this with the service of the temple ! 

Lincoln Cathedral is built of a yellowish brown-stone, 
which appears either to have been largely restored, or 
else does not assume the hoary, crumbly surface that 
gives such a venerable aspect to most of the ancient 
churches and castles in England. In many parts, the 
recent restorations are quite evident ; but other, and 
much the larger portions, can scarcely have been touched 
for centuries: for there are still the gargoyles, perfect, or 
with broken noses, as the case may be, but showing that 
variety and fertility of grotesque extravagance which no 
modern imitation can effect. There are innumerable 
niches, too, up the whole height of the towers, above 
and around the entrance, and all over the walls : most 
of them empty, but a few containing the lamentable rem- 
nants of headless saints and angels. It is singular what 
a native animosity lives in the human heart against carved 
images, insomuch that, whether they represent Christian 
saint or Pagan deity, all unsophisticated men seize the 
first safe opportunity to knock off their heads ! In spite 
of all dilapidations, however, the effect of the west front 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 1G5 

of the Cathedral is still exceedingly rich, being covered 
from massive base to airy summit with the minutest 
details of sculpture and carving : at least, it was so 
once ; and even now the spiritual impression of its 
beauty remains so strong, that we have to look twice 
to see that much of it has been obliterated. I have seen 
a cherry-stone carved all over by a monk, so minutely 
that it must have cost him half a lifetime,pf labor; and. 
this cathedral-front seems to have been elaborated in a 
monkish spirit, like that cherry-stone. Not that the result 
is in the least petty, but miraculously grand, and all the 
more so for the faithful beauty of the smallest details. 

An elderly man, seeing us looking up at the west 
front, came to the door of an adjacent house, and called 
to inquire if we wished to go into the Cathedral; but as 
there would have been a dusky twilight beneath its roof, 
like the antiquity that has sheltered itself within, we 
declined for the present. So we merely walked round 
the exterior, and thought it more beautiful than that of 
York ; though, on recollection, I hardly deem it so majes- 
tic and mighty as that. It is vain to attempt a descrip- 
tion, or seek even to record the feeling which the edifice 
inspires. It does not impress the beholder as an inani- 
mate object, but as something that has a vast, quiet, 
long-enduring life of its own, — a creation which man 
did not build, though in some way or other it is con- 
nected with him, and kindred to human nature. In 
short, I fall straightway to talking nonsense, when I try 
to express my inner sense of this and other cathedrals. 

While we stood in the close, at the eastern end of the 
Minster, the clock chimed the quarters; and then Great 
Tom, who hangs in the Rood Tower, told us it was eight 
o'clock, in far the sweetest and mightiest accents that I 
ever heard from any bell, — slow, and solemn, and allow- 



166 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

ing the profound reverberations of each stroke to die 
away before the next one fell. It was still broad day- 
light in that upper region of the town, and would be so 
for some time longer ; but the evening atmosphere was 
getting sharp and cool. We therefore descended the 
steep street, — our younger companion running before 
us, and gathering such headway that I fully expected 
him to break his head against some projecting wall. 

In the morning we took a fly (an English term for an 
exceedingly sluggish vehicle), and drove up to the Min- 
ster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than the one 
we had previously climbed. We alighted before the west 
front, and sent our charioteer in quest of the verger; 
but, as he was not immediately to be found, a young girl 
let us into the nave. We found it very grand, it is need- 
less to say, but not so grand, methought, as the vast nave 
of York Cathedral, especially beneath the great central 
tower of the latter. Unless a writer intends a profess- 
edly architectural description, there is but one set of 
phrases in which to talk of all the cathedrals in England 
and elsewhere. They are alike in their great features : 
an acre or two of stone flags for a pavement ; rows of 
vast columns supporting a vaulted roof at a dusky 
height ; great windows, sometimes richly bedimmed with 
ancient or modern stained glass; and an elaborately 
carved screen between the nave and chancel, breaking 
the vista that might else be of such glorious length, and 
which is further choked up by a massive organ, — in 
spite of which obstructions, you catch the broad, varie- 
gated glimmer of the painted east window, where a hun- 
dred saints wear their robes of transfiguration. Behind 
the screen are the carved oaken stalls of the Chapter and 
Prebendaries, the Bishop's throne, the pulpit, the altar, 
and whatever else may furnish out the Holy of Holies. 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 167 

Nor must we forget the range of chapels (once dedicated 
to Catholic saints, but which have now lost their indi- 
vidual consecration), nor the old monuments of kings, 
warriors, and prelates, in the side-aisles of the chancel. 
In close contiguity to the main body of the Cathedral is 
the Chapter-House, which, here at Lincoln, as at Salis- 
bury, is supported by one central pillar rising from the 
floor, and putting forth branches like a tree, to hold up 
the roof. Adjacent to the Chapter-House are the clois- 
ters, extending round a quadrangle, and paved with let- 
tered tombstones, the more antique of which have had 
their inscriptions half obliterated by the feet of monks 
taking their noontide exercise in these sheltered walks, 
five hundred years ago. Sonic of these old burial-stones, 
although with ancient crosses engraved upon them, have 
been made to serve as memorials to dead people of very 
recent date. 

In the chancel, among the tombs of forgotten bishops 
and knights, we saw an immense slab of stone purport- 
ing to be the monument of Catherine Swynford, wife of 
John of Gaunt ; also, here was the shrine of the little 
Saint Hugh, that Christian child who was fabled to have 
been crucified by the Jews of Lincoln. The Cathedral is 
not particularly rich in monuments; for it suffered griev- 
ous outrage and dilapidation, both at the Reformation 
and in Cromwell's time. This latter iconoclast is in espe- 
cially bad odor with the sextons and vergers of most of 
the old churches which I have visited. His soldiers 
stabled their steeds in the nave of Lincoln Cathedral, and 
hacked and hewed the monkish sculptures, and the ances- 
tral memorials of great families, quite at their wicked and 
plebeian pleasure. Nevertheless, there are some most 
exquisite and marvellous specimens of flowers, foliage, 
and grapevines, and miracles of stone-work twined about 



168 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

arches, as if the material had been as soft as wax in the 
cunning sculptor's hands, — the leaves being represented 
with all their veins, so that you would almost think it 
petrified Nature, for which he sought to steal the praise 
of Art. Here, too, were those grotesque faces which al- 
ways grin at you from the projections of monkish archi- 
tecture, as if the builders had gone mad with their own 
deep solemnity, or dreaded such a catastrophe, unless 
permitted to throw in something ineffably absurd. 

Originally, it is supposed, all the pillars of this great 
edifice, and all these magic sculptures, were polished to 
the utmost degree of lustre; nor is it unreasonable to 
think that the artists would have taken these further 
pains, when they had already bestowed so much labor in 
working out their conceptions to the cxtremest point. 
But, at present, the whole interior of the Cathedral is 
smeared over with a yellowish wash, the very meanest 
hue imaginable, and for which somebody's soul has a 
bitter reckoning to undergo. 

In the centre of the grassy quadrangle about which the 
cloisters perambulate is a small, mean brick building, 
with a locked door. Our guide, — I forgot to say that 
we had been captured by a verger, in black, and with a 
white tie, but of a lusty and jolly aspect, — our guide 
unlocked this door, and disclosed a flight of steps. At 
the bottom appeared what I should have taken to be a 
large square of dim, worn, and faded oil-carpeting, which 
might originally have been painted of a rather gaudy pat- 
tern. This was a Roman tessellated pavement, made of 
small colored bricks, or pieces of burnt clay. It was 
accidentally discovered here, and has not been med- 
dled with, further than by removing the superincumbent 
earth and rubbish. 

Nothing else occurs to me, just now, to be recorded 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 169 

about the interior of the Cathedral, except that we saw 
a place where the stone pavement had been worn away 
by the feet of ancient pilgrims scraping upon it, as they 
knelt down before a shrine of the Virgin. 

Leaving the Minster, we now went along a street of 
more venerable appearance than we had heretofore seen, 
bordered with houses, the high peaked roofs of which 
were covered with red earthen tiles. It led us to a Ro- 
man arch, which was once the gateway of a fortification, 
and has been striding across the English street ever since 
the latter was a faint village-path, and for centuries be- 
fore. The arch is about four hundred yards from the 
Cathedral ; and it is to be noticed that there are Roman 
remains in all this neighborhood, some above ground, 
and doubtless innumerable more beneath it ; for, as in 
ancient Rome itself, an inundation of accumulated soil 
seems to have swept over what was the surface of that 
earlier day. The gateway which I am speaking about is 
probably buried to a third of its height, and perhaps has 
as perfect a Roman pavement (if sought for at the origi- 
nal depth) as that which runs beneath the Arch of Titus. 
It is a rude and massive structure, and seems as stalwart 
now as it could Lave been two thousand years ago ; and 
though Time has gnawed it externally, he has made what 
amends he could by crowning its rough and broken sum- 
mit with grass and weeds, and planting tufts of yellow 
flowers on the projections up and down the sides. 

There are the ruins of a Norman castle, built by the 
Conqueror, in pretty close proximity to the Cathedral ; 
but the old gateway is obstructed by a modern door of 
wood, and we were denied admittance because some part 
of the precincts are used as a prison. We now rambled 
about on the broad back of the hill, which, besides the 
Minster and ruined castle, is the site of some stately and 
8 



170 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTOX. 

queer old houses, and of many mean little hovels. I sus- 
pect that all or most of the life of the present day has 
subsided into the lower town, and that only priests, poor 
people, and prisoners dwell in these upper regions. In 
the wide, dry moat, at the base of the castle-wall, are 
clustered whole colonies of small houses, some of brick, 
but the larger portion built of old stones which once 
made part of the Norman keep, or of Roman structures 
that existed before the Conqueror's castle was ever 
dreamed about. They are like toadstools that spring up 
from the mould of a decaying tree. Ugly as they are, 
they add wonderfully to the picturesqueness of the scene, 
being quite as valuable, in that respect, as the great, 
broad, ponderous ruin of the castle-keep, which rose high 
above our heads, heaving its huge gray mass out of a 
bank of green foliage and ornamental shrubbery, such as 
lilacs and other flowering plants, in which its foundations 
were completely hidden. 

After walking quite round the castle, I made an ex- 
cursion through the Roman gateway, along a pleasant 
and level road bordered with dwellings of various char- 
acter. One or two were houses of gentility, with delight- 
ful and shadowy lawns before them ; many had those 
high, red-tiled roofs, ascending into acutely pointed ga- 
bles, which seem to belong to the same epoch as some of 
the edifices in our own earlier towns ; and there were 
pleasant-looking cottages, very sylvan and rural, with 
hedges so dense and high, fencing them in, as almost to 
hide them up to the eaves of their thatched roofs. In 
front of one of these I saw various images, crosses, and 
relics of antiquity, among which were fragments of old 
Catholic tombstones, disposed by way of ornament. 

We now went home to the Saracen's Head ; and as 
the weather was very unpropitious, and it sprinkled a 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 171 

little now and then, I would gladly have felt myself re- 
leased from further thraldom to the Cathedral. But it 
had taken possession of me, and would not let me be at 
rest ; so at length I found myself compelled to climb the 
hill again, between daylight and dusk. A mist was now 
hovering about the upper height of the great central 
tower, so as to dim and half obliterate its battlements 
and piunacles, even while I stood in the close beneath it. 
It was the most impressive view that I had had. The 
whole lower part of the structure was seen with perfect 
distinctness; but at the very summit the mist was so 
dense as to form an actual cloud, as well denned as ever 
I saw resting on a mountain-top. Really and literally, 
here was a " cloud-capt tower." 

The entire Cathedral, too, transfigured itself into a 
richer beauty and more imposing majesty than ever. The 
longer I looked, the better I loved it. Its exterior is 
certainly far more beautiful than that of York Minster; 
and its finer effect is due, I think, to the many peaks in 
which the structure ascends, and to the pinnacles which, 
as it were, repeat and re-echo them into the sky. York 
Cathedral is comparatively square and angular in its 
general effect ; but in this at Lincoln there is a continual 
mystery of variety, so that at every glance you are aware 
of a change, and a disclosure of something new, yet 
working an harmonious development of what you have 
heretofore seen. The west front is "unspeakably grand, 
and may be read over and over again forever, and still 
show undetected meanings, like a great, broad page of 
marvellous writing in black-letter, — so many sculptured 
ornaments there are, blossoming out before your eyes, 
and gray statues that have grown there since you looked 
last, and empty niches, and a hundred airy canopies 
beneath which carved images used to be, and where they 



172 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

will show themselves again, if you gaze long enough. — 
But I will not say another word about the Cathedral. 

We spent the rest of the day within the sombre pre- 
cincts of the Saracen's Head, reading yesterday's "Times," 
"The Guide-Book of Lincoln," and "The Directory of 
the Eastern Counties." Dismal as the weather was, the 
street beneath our window was enlivened with a great 
bustle and turmoil of people all the evening, because it 
was Saturday night, and they had accomplished their 
week's toil, received their wages, and were making their 
small purchases against Sunday, and enjoying themselves 
as well as they knew how. A band of music passed to 
and fro several times, with the rain-drops falling into the 
mouth of the brazen trumpet and pattering on the bass- 
drum ; a spirit-shop, opposite the hotel, had a vast run 
of custom ; and a coffee-dealer, in the open air, found 
occasional vent for his commodity, in spite of the cold 
water that dripped into the cups. The whole breadth of 
the street, between the Stone Bow and the bridge across 
the Witham, was thronged to overflowing, and humming 
with human life. 

Observing in the Guide-Book that a steamer runs on the 
river Witham between Lincoln and Boston, I inquired 
of the waiter, and learned that she was to start on Mon- 
day at ten o'clock. Thinking it might be an interesting 
trip, and a pleasant variation of our customary mode of 
travel, we determined to make the voyage. The Witham 
flows through Lincoln, crossing the main street under an 
arched bridge of Gothic construction, a little below the 
Saracen's Head. It has more the appearance of a canal 
than of a river, in its passage through the town, — being 
bordered with hewn-stone ma son- work on each side, and 
provided with one or two locks. The steamer proved to 
be small, dirty, and altogether inconvenient. The early 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 173 

morning- had been bright ; but the sky now lowered upon 
us with a sulky English temper, and we had not long put 
off before we felt an ugly wind from the German Ocean 
blowing right in our teeth. There were a number of 
passengers on board, country-people, such as travel by 
third-class on the railway; for, I suppose, nobody but 
ourselves ever dreamt of voyaging by the steamer for the 
sake of what he might happen upon in the way of river- 
scenery. 

We bothered a good while about getting through a 
preliminary lock ; nor, when fairly under way, did Ave 
ever accomplish, I think, six miles an hour. Constant 
delays were caused, moreover, by stopping to take up 
passengers and freight, — not at regular landing-places, 
but anywhere along the green banks. The scenery was 
identical with that of the railway, because the latter runs 
along by the river-side through the whole distance, or 
nowhere departs from it except to make a short cut 
across some sinuosity; so that our only advantage lay 
in the drawling, snail-like slothfulness of our progress, 
which allowed us time enough and to spare for the ob- 
jects along the shore. Unfortunately, there was nothing, 
or next to nothing, to be seen, — the country being one 
unvaried level over the whole thirty miles of our voyage, 
— not a hill in sight, either near or far, except that soli- 
tary one on the summit of which we had left Lincoln 
Cathedral. And the Cathedral was our landmark for four 
hours or more, and. at last rather faded out than was 
hidden by any intervening object. 

It would have been a pleasantly lazy day enough, if 
the rough and bitter wind had not blown directly in our 
faces, and chilled us through, in spite of the sunshine 
that soon succeeded a sprinkle or two of rain. These 
English east-winds, which prevail from February till 



174 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

June, are greater nuisances than the east-wind of our 
own Atlantic coast, although they do not bring mist and 
storm, as with us, but some of the sunniest weather that 
England sees. Under their influence, the sky smiles and 
is villanous. 

The landscape was tame to the last degree, but had an 
English character that was abundantly worth our look- 
ing at. A green luxuriance of early grass ; old, high- 
roofed farm-houses, surrounded by their stone barns and 
ricks of hay and grain ; ancient villages, with the square, 
gray tower of a church seen afar over the level country, 
amid the cluster of red roofs ; here and there a shadowy 
grove of venerable trees, surrounding what was perhaps 
an Elizabethan hall, though it looked more like the abode 
of some rich yeoman. Once, too, we saw the tower of 
a mediaeval castle, that of Tattershall, built by a Crom- 
well, but whether of the Protector's family I cannot tell. 
But the gentry do not appear to have settled multitu- 
dinously in this tract of country ; nor is it to be won- 
dered at, since a lover of the picturesque would as soon 
think of settling in Holland. The river retains its canal- 
like aspect all along ; and only in the latter part of its 
course does it become more than wide enough for the 
little steamer to turn itself round, — at broadest, not 
more than twice that width. 

The only memorable incident of our voyage happened 
when a mother-duck was leading her little fleet of five 
ducklings across the river, just as our steamer went 
swaggering by, stirring the quiet stream into great waves 
that lashed the banks on either side. I saw the immi- 
nence of the catastrophe, and hurried to the stern of the 
boat to witness its consummation, since I could not pos- 
sibly avert it. The poor ducklings had uttered their 
baby-quacks, and striven with all their tiny might to 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 175 

escape ; four of them, I believe, were washed aside and 
thrown off unhurt from the steamer's prow; but the fifth 
must have gone under the whole length of the keel, and 
never could have come up alive. 

At last, in mid-afternoon, we beheld the tall tower of 
Saint Botolph's Church (three hundred feet high, the 
same elevation as the tallest tower of Lincoln Cathedral) 
looming in the distance. At about half past four we 
reached Boston (which name has been shortened, in the 
course of ages, by the quick and slovenly English pro- 
nunciation, from Botolph's town), and were taken by a 
cab to the Peacock, in the market-place. It was the best 
hotel in town, though a poor one enough ; and we were 
shown into a small, stifled parlor, dingy, musty, and 
scented with stale tobacco-smoke, — tobacco-smoke two 
days old, for the waiter assured us that the room had 
not more recently been fumigated. An exceedingly grim 
waiter he was, apparently a genuine descendant of the 
old Puritans of this English Boston, and quite as sour 
as those who people the daughter-city in New England. 
Our parlor had the one recommendation of looking into 
the market-place, and affording a sidelong glimpse of the 
tall spire and noble old church. 

In my first ramble about the town, chance led me to 
the river-side, at that quarter where the port is situated. 
Here were long buildings of an old-fashioned aspect, 
seemingly warehouses, with windows in the high, steep 
roofs. The Custom-House found ample accommodation 
within an ordinary dwelling-house. Two or three large 
schooners were moored along the river's brink, which 
had here a stone margin ; another large and handsome 
schooner was evidently just finished, rigged and equipped 
for her first voyage ; the rudiments of another were on 
the stocks, in a shipyard bordering on the river. Still 



176 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

another, while I was looking on, came up the stream, and 
lowered her mainsail, from a foreign voyage. An old 
man on the bank hailed her and inquired about her 
cargo ; but the Lincolnshire people have such a queer 
way of talking English that I could not understand the 
reply. Farther down the river. I saw a brig, approach- 
ing rapidly under sail. The whole scene made an odd 
impression of bnstle, and sluggishness, and decay, and a 
remnant of wholesome life ; and I could not but contrast 
it with the mighty and populous activity of our own Bos- 
ton, which was once the feeble infant of this old English 
town ; — the latter, perhaps, almost stationary ever since 
that day, as if the birth of such an offspring had taken 
away its own principle of growth. I thought of Long 
Wharf, and Eaneuil Hall, and Washington Street, and 
the Great Elm, and the State House, and exulted lustily, 
— but yet began to feel at home in this good old town, 
for its very name's sake, as I never had before felt, in 
England. 

The next morning we came out in the early sunshine 
(the sun must have been shining nearly four hours, how- 
ever, for it was after eight o'clock), and strolled about 
the streets, like people who had a right to be there. 
The market-place of Boston is an irregular square, into 
one end of which the chancel of the church slightly pro- 
jects. The gates of the churchyard were open and free 
to all passengers, and the common footway of the towns- 
people seems to lie to and fro across it. It is paved, 
according to English custom, with flat tombstones ; and 
there are also raised or altar tombs, some of which have 
armorial bearings on them. One clergyman has caused 
himself and his wife to be buried right in the middle of 
the stone-bordered path that traverses the churchyard; 
so that not an individual of the thousands who pass along 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 177 

this public way can help trampling over him or her. The 
scene, nevertheless, was very cheerful in the morning 
sun : people going about their business in the day's 
primal freshness, which was just as fresh here as in 
younger villages ; children with milk-pails, loitering over 
the burial-stones ; school-boys playing leap-frog with the 
altar-tombs ; the simple old town preparing itself for the 
day, which would be like myriads of other days that had 
passed over it, but yet would be worth living through. 
And down on the churchyard, where were buried many 
generations whom it remembered in their time, looked 
the stately tower of Saint Botolph; and it was good to 
see and think of such an age -long giant, intermarrying 
the present epoch with a distant past, and getting quite 
imbued with human nature by being so immemorially 
connected with men's familiar knowledge and homely in- 
terests. It is a noble tower ; and the jackdaws evidently 
have pleasant homes in their hereditary nests among its 
topmost windows, and live delightful lives, flitting and 
cawing about its pinnacles and flying butt resses. I should 
almost like to be a jackdaw myself, for the sake of liv- 
ing up there. 

In front of the church, not more than twenty yards off, 
and with a low brick wall between, flows the river 
Witham. On the hither bank a fisherman was washing 
his boat; and another skiff, with her sail lazily half 
twisted, lay on the opposite strand. The stream at this 
point is about of such width, that, if the tall tower were 
to tumble over flat on its face, its top-stone might per- 
haps reach to the middle of the chanuel. On the farther 
shore there is a line of antique-looking houses, with 
roofs of red tile, and windows opening out of them, — 
some of these dwellings being so ancient, that the Rev- 
erend Mr. Cotton, subsequently our first Boston minister, 
8* L 



178 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

must have seen them with his own bodily eyes, when he 
used to issue from the front-portal after service. In- 
deed, there must be very many houses here, aud even 
some streets, that bear much the aspect that they did 
when the Puritan divine paced solemnly among them. 

In our rambles about town, we went into a booksell- 
er's shop to inquire if he had any description of Boston 
for sale. He offered me (or, rather, produced for in- 
spection, not supposing that I would buy it) a quarto 
history of the town, published by subscription, nearly 
forty years ago. The bookseller showed himself a well- 
informed and affable man, and a local antiquary, to whom 
a party of inquisitive strangers were a godsend. He had 
met, with several Americans, who, at various times, "had 
come on pilgrimages to this place, and he had been in 
correspondence with others. Happening to have heard 
the name of one member of our party, he showed us 
great courtesy and kindness, and invited us into his 
inner domicile, where, as he modestly intimated, he kept 
a few articles which it might interest us to see. So we 
went with him through the shop, up stairs, into the 
private part of his establishment; and, really, it was one 
of the rarest adventures I ever met with, to stumble 
upon this treasure of a man, with his treasury of antiqui- 
ties and curiosities, veiled behind the unostentatious 
front of a bookseller's ship, in a very moderate line of 
village business. The two up-stair rooms into which 
he introduced us were so crowded with inestimable 
articles, that we were' almost afraid to stir for fear of 
breaking some fragile thing that had been accumulating 
value for unknown centuries. 

The apartment was hung round with pictures and old 
engravings, many of which were extremely rare. Pre- 
mising that he was going to show us something very 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 179 

curious, Mr. Porter went into the next room and re- 
turned with a counterpane of fine linen, elaborately em- 
broidered with silk, which so profusely covered the linen 
that the general effect was as if the main texture were 
silken. It was stained and seemed very old, and had an 
ancient fragrance. It was wrought all over with birds 
and flowers in a most delicate style of needlework, and 
among other devices, more than once repeated, was the 
cipher, M. S., — being the initials of one of the most un- 
happy names that ever a woman bore. This quilt was 
embroidered by the hands of Mary Queen of Scots, dur- 
ing her imprisonment at Fotheringay Castle; and having 
evidently been a work of years, she had doubtless shed 
many tears over it, and wrought many doleful thoughts 
and abortive schemes into its texture, along with the 
birds and flowers. As a counterpart to this most pre- 
cious relic, our friend produced some of the handiwork 
of a former Queen of Otaheite, presented by her to Cap- 
tain Cook ; it was a bag, cunningly made of some deli- 
cate vegetable stuff, and ornamented with feathers. 
Next, he brought out a green silk waistcoat of very 
antique fashion, trimmed about the edges and pocket- 
holes with a rich and delicate embroidery of gold and 
silver. This (as the possessor of the treasure proved, by 
tracing its pedigree till it came into his hands) was once 
the vestment of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Burleigh; but 
that great statesman must have been a person of very 
moderate girth in the chest and waist; for the garment 
was hardly more than a comfortable fit for a boy of 
eleven, the smallest American of our party, who tried on 
the gorgeous waistcoat. Then, Mr. Porter produced 
some curiously engraved drinking-glasses, with a view of 
Saint Botolph's steeple on one of them, and other Boston 
edifices, public or domestic, on the remaining two, very 



180 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

admirably done. These crystal goblets had beeu a pres- 
ent, lung ago, to an old master of the Free School from 
his pupils ; and it is very rarely, I imagine, that a re- 
tired schoolmaster can exhibit such trophies of gratitude 
and affection, won from the victims of his birch rod. 

Our kind friend kept bringing out one unexpected and 
wholly unexpectable thing after another, as if he were a 
magician, and had only to fling a private signal into the 
air, and some attendant imp would hand forth any strange 
relic we might choose to ask for. He was especially rich 
in drawings by the Old Masters, producing two or three, 
of exquisite delicacy, by Raphael, one by Salvator, a head 
by Rembrandt, and others, in chalk or pen-and-ink, by 
Giordano, Benvenuto Cellmi, and hands almost as fa- 
mous ; and besides what were shown us, there seemed to 
be an endless supply of these art-treasures in reserve. 
On the wall hung a crayon-portrait of Sterne, never en- 
graved, representing him as a rather young man, bloom- 
ing, and not uncomely ; it was the worldly face of a man 
fond of pleasure, but without that ugly, keen, sarcastic, 
odd expression that we see in his only engraved portrait. 
The picture is an original, and must needs be very valua- 
ble ; and we wish it might be prefixed to some new and 
worthier biography of a writer whose character the world 
has always treated with singular harshness, considering 
how much it owes him. There was likewise a crayon- 
portrait of Sterne's wife, looking so haughty and unami- 
able, that the wonder is, not that he ultimately left her, 
but how he ever contrived to live a week with such an 
awful woman. 

After looking at these, and a great many more things 
than I can remember, above .stairs, we went down to a 
parlor, where this wonderful bookseller opened an old 
cabinet, containing numberless drawers, and looking just 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 181 

fit to be tlie repository of such knick-knacks as were 
stored up in it. He appeared to possess more treasures 
than he himself knew off, or knew where to find ; but, 
rummaging here and there, he brought forth things 
new and old: rose-nobles, Victoria crowns, gold angels, 
double sovereigns of George IV., two-guinea pieces of 
George II. ; a marriage-medal of the first Napoleon, only 
forty-five of which were ever struck off, and of which 
even the British Museum does not contain a specimen 
like this, in gold ; a brass medal, three or four inches in 
diameter, of a Roman emperor; together with buckles, 
bracelets, amulets, and I know not what besides. There 
was a green silk tassel from the fringe of Queen Mary's 
bed at llolyrood Palace. There were illuminated mis- 
sals, antique Latin Bibles, and (what may seem of espe- 
cial interest to the historian) a Secret-Book of Queen Eliz- 
abeth, in manuscript, written, for aught I know, by her 
own hand. On examination, however, it proved to con- 
tain, not secrets of state, but recipes for dishes, drinks, 
medicines, washes, and all such matters of housewifery, 
the toilet, and domestic quackery, among which we were 
horrified by the title of one of the nostrums, " How to 
kill a Fellow quickly " ! We never doubted that bloody 
Queen Bess might often have had occasion for such a 
recipe, but wondered at her frankness, and at her attend- 
ing to these anomalous necessities in such a methodical 
way. The truth is, Ave had read amiss, and the Queen 
had spelt amiss : the word was " Fellon," — a sort of 
whitlow, — not " Fellow." 

Our hospitable friend now made us drink a glass of 
wine, as old and genuine as the curiosities of his cabinet ; 
and while sipping it, we ungratefully tried to excite his 
envy, by telling of various things, interesting to an an- 
tiquary and virtuoso, which we had seen in the course of 



182 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

our travels about England. We spoke, for instance, of a 
missal bound in solid gold and set around with jewels, 
but of such intrinsic value as no setting could enhance, 
for it was exquisitely illuminated, throughout, by the hand 
of Raphael himself. We mentioned a little silver case 
which once contained a portion of the heart of Louis 
XIV. nicely done up in spices, but, to the owner's horror 
and astonishment, Dean Buckland popped the kingly 
morsel into his mouth, and swallowed it. We told about 
the black-letter prayer-book of King Charles the Martyr, 
used by him upon the scaffold, taking which into our 
hands, it opened of itself at the Communion Service ; and 
there, on the left-hand page, appeared a spot about as 
large as a sixpence, of a yellowish or brownish hue : a 
drop of the King's blood had fallen there. 

Mr. Porter now accompanied us to the church, but 
first leading us to a vacant spot of ground where old 
John Cotton's vicarage had stood till a very short time 
since. According to our friend's description, it was a 
humble habitation, of the cottage order, built of brick, 
with a thatched roof. The site is now rudely fenced in, 
and cultivated as a vegetable garden. In the right-hand 
aisle of the church there is an ancient chapel, which, at 
the time of our visit, was in process of restoration, and 
was to be dedicated to Mr. Cotton, whom these English 
people consider as the founder of our American Bos- 
ton. It would contain a painted memorial-window, in 
honor of the old Puritan minister. A festival in com- 
memoration of the event was to take place in the ensuing 
July, to which I had myself received an invitation, but I 
knew too well the pains and penalties incurred by an 
invited guest at public festivals in England to accept it. 
It ought to be recorded (and it seems to have made a 
very kindly impression on our kinsfolk here) that five 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 183 

hundred pounds had been contributed by persons in the 
United States, principally in Boston, towards the cost of 
the memorial-window, and the repair and restoration of 
the chapel. 

After we emerged from the chapel, Mr. Porter ap- 
proached us with the vicar, to whom he kindly introduced 
us, and then took his leave. May a stranger's benedic- 
tion rest upon him ! He is a most pleasant man ; rather, 
I imagine, a virtuoso than an antiquary; for he seemed 
to value the Queen of Otaheite's bag as highly as Queen 
Mary's embroidered quilt, and to have an omnivorous 
appetite for everything strange and rare. Would that 
we could fill up his shelves and drawers (if there are any 
vacant spaces left) with the choicest trifles that have 
dropped out of Time's carpet-bag, or give him the carpet- 
bag itself, to take out what he will ! 

The vicar looked about thirty years old, a gentleman, 
evidently assured of his position (as clergymen of the 
Established Church invariably are), comfortable and well- 
to-do, a scholar and a Christian, and fit to be a bishop, 
knowing how to make the most of life without prejudice 
to the life to come. I was glad to see such a model 
English priest so suitably accommodated with an old 
English church. He kindly and courteously did the hon- 
ors, showing us quite round the interior, giving us all 
the information that w T e required, and then leaving us to 
the quiet enjoyment of what we came to see. 

The interior of Saint Botolph's is very fine and satis- 
factory, as stately, almost, as a cathedral, and has been 
repaired — -so far as repairs were necessary' — -in a chaste 
and noble style. The great eastern window is of modern 
painted glass, but is the richest, mellowest, and tenderest 
modern window that I have ever seen: the art of paint- 
ing these glowing transparencies in pristine perfection. 



184 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

being one that the world has lost. The vast, clear space 
of the interior church delighted me. There was no 
screen, — nothing between the vestibule and the altar to 
break the long vista; even the organ stood aside, — 
though it by and by made us aware of its presence by a 
melodious roar. Around the walls there were old en- 
graved brasses, and a stone coffin, and an alabaster knight 
of Saint John, and an alabaster lady, each recumbent at 
full length, as large as life, and in perfect preservation, 
except for a slight modern touch at the tips of their 
noses. In the chancel we saw a great deal of oaken 
work, quaintly and admirably carved, especially about the 
seats formerly appropriated to the monks, which were so 
contrived as to tumble clown with a tremendous crash, if 
the occupant happened to fall asleep. 

We now essayed to climb into the upper regions. Up 
we went, winding and still winding round the circular 
stairs, till we came to the gallery beneath the stone roof 
of the tower, whence we could look down and see the 
raised Font, and my Talma lying on one of the steps, 
and looking about as big as a pocket-handkerchief. Then 
up again, up, up, up, through a yet smaller staircase, till 
we emerged into another stone gallery, above the jack- 
daws, and far above the roof beneath which we had 
before made a halt. Then up another flight, which led 
us into a pinnacle of the temple, but not the highest ; so, 
retracing our steps, we took the right turret this time, 
and emerged into the loftiest lantern, where we saw level 
Lincolnshire, far and near, though with a haze on the 
distant horizon. There were dusty roads, a river, and 
canals, converging towards Boston, which — a congrega- 
tion of red-tiled roofs — lay beneath our feet, with pygmy 
people creeping about its narrow streets. "We were three 
hundred feet aloft, and the pinnacle on which we stood is 
a landmark forty miles at sea. 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 185 

Content, and weary of our elevation, we descended the 
corkscrew stairs and left the church; the last object that 
we noticed in the interior being a bird, which appeared 
to be at home there, and responded with its cheerful 
notes to the swell of the organ. Pausing on the church- 
steps, we observed that there were formerly two statues, 
one on each side of the doorway ; the canopies still re- 
maining and the pedestals being about a yard from tie 
ground. Some of Mr. Cotton's Puritan parishioners are 
probably responsible for the disappearance of these stone 
saints. This doorway at the base of the tower is now 
much dilapidated, but must once have been very rich 
and of a peculiar fashion. It opens its arch through a 
great square tablet of stone, reared against the front of 
the tower. On most of the projections, whether on the 
tower or about the body of the church, there are gar- 
goyles of genuine Gothic grotesqueness, — fiends, beasts, 
angels, and combinations of all three ; and where portions 
of the edifice are restored, the modern sculptors have 
tried to imitate these wild fantasies, but with very poor 
success. Extravagance and absurdity have still their 
law, and should pay as rigid obedience to it as the prim- 
mest things on earth. 

In our further rambles about Boston, we crossed the 
Sver by a bridge, and observed that the larger part of 
the town seems to lie on that side of its navigable stream. 
The crooked streets and narrow lanes reminded me much 
of Hanover Street, Ann Street, and other portions of the 
North End of our American Boston, as I remember that 
picturesque region in my boyish days. It is not un- 
reasonable to suppose that the local habits and recollec- 
tions of the first settlers may have had some influence on 
the physical character of the streets and houses in the 
New England metropolis; at any rate, here is a similar 



186 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

intricacy of bewildering lanes, and numbers of old peaked 
and projecting-storied dwellings, such as I used to see 
there. It is singular what a home-feeling and sense of 
kindred I derived from this hereditary connection and 
fancied physiognomical resemblance between the old town 
and its well-grown daughter, and how reluctant I was, 
after chill years of banishment, to leave this hospitable 
place, on that account. Moreover, it recalled some of 
the features of another American town, my own dear 
native place, -when I saw the seafaring people leaning 
against posts, and sitting on planks, under the lee of 
warehouses, — or lolling on long-boats, drawn up high 
and dry, as sailors and old wharf-rats are accustomed to 
do, in seaports of little business. In other respects, the 
English town is more village -like than either of the 
American ones. The women and budding girls chat to- 
gether at their doors, and exchange merry greetings with 
young men; children chase one another in the summer 
twilight ; school-boys sail little boats on the river, or 
play at marbles across the flat tombstones in the church- 
yard ; and ancient men, in breeches and long waistcoats, 
wander slowly about the streets, with a certain familiarity 
of deportment, as if each one were everybody's grand- 
father. I have frequently observed, in old English 
towns, that Old Age comes forth more cheerfully and 
genially into the sunshine than among ourselves, where 
the rush, stir, bustle, and irreverent energy of youth arc 
so preponderant, that the poor, forlorn grandsires begin 
to doubt whether they have a right to breathe in such a 
world any longer, and so hide their silvery heads in soli- 
tude. Speaking of old men, T am reminded of the schol- 
ars of the Boston Charity School, who walk about in 
antique, long-skirted blue coats, and knee-breeches, and 
with bands at their necks, — perfect and grotesque pic- 
tures of the nostume of three centuries ago. 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 187 

On the morning of our departure, I looked from the 
parlor-window of the Peacock into the market-place, and 
beheld its irregular square already well covered with 
booths, and more in process of being put up, by stretch- 
ing tattered sail-cloth on poles. It was market-day. 
The dealers were arranging their commodities, consisting 
chiefly of vegetables, the great bulk of which seemed to 
be cabbages. Later in the forenoon there was a much 
greater variety of merchandise : basket-work, both for 
fancy and use ; twig-brooms, beehives, oranges, rustic 
attire ; all sorts of things, in short, that are commonly 
sold at a rural fair. I heard the lowing of cattle, too, 
and the bleating of sheep, and found that there was a 
market for cows, oxen, and pigs, in another part of the 
town. A crowd of towns-people and Lincolnshire yeo- 
men elbowed one another in the square ; Mr. Punch was 
squeaking in one corner, and a vagabond juggler tried to 
find space for his exhibition in another : so that my final 
glimpse of Boston was calculated to leave a livelier im- 
pression than my former ones. Meanwhile the tower of 
Saint Botolph's looked benignantly down ; and I fan- 
cied it was bidding me farewell, as it did Mr. Cotton, two 
or three hundred years ago, and telling me to describe 
its venerable height, and the town beneath it, to the peo- 
ple of the American city, who are partly akin, if not to 
the living inhabitants of Old Boston, yet to some of the 
dust that lies in its churchyard. 

One thing more. They have a Bunker Hill in the 
vicinity of their town ; and (what Could hardly be ex- 
pected of an English community) seem proud to think 
that their neighborhood has given name to our first and 
most widely celebrated and best remembered battle-field. 



NEAR OXFORD. 




N a fine morning in September we set out on an 
excursion to Blenheim, — the sculptor and my- 
self being seated on the box of our four-horse 
carriage, two more of the party in the dicky, and the 
others less agreeably accommodated inside. We had no 
coachman, but two postilions in short scarlet jackets 
and leather breeches with top-boots, each astride of a 
horse; so that, all the way along, when not otherwise 
attracted, we had the interesting spectacle of their up- 
and-down bobbing in the saddle. It was a sunny and 
beautiful day, a specimen of the perfect English weather, 
just warm enough for comfort, — indeed, a little too 
warm, perhaps, in the noontide sun, — yet retaining a 
mere spice or suspicion of austerity, which made it all 
the more enjoyable. 

The country between Oxford and Blenheim is not par- 
ticularly interesting, being almost level, or undulating 
very slightly ; nor is Oxfordshire, agriculturally, a rich 
part of England. We saw one or two hamlets, and I 
especially remember a picturesque old gabled house at a 
turnpike-gate, and, altogether, the wayside scenery had 
an aspect of old-fashioned English life ; but there was 
nothing very memorable till we reached Woodstock, and 
stopped to water our horses at the Black Bear. This 



NEAR OXFORD. 189 

neighborhood is called New Woodstock, but has by no 
means the brand-new appearance of an American town, 
being a large village of stone houses, most of them 
pretty well time-worn and weather-stained. The Black 
Bear is an ancient inn, large and respectable, with balus- 
traded staircases, and intricate passages and corridors, 
and queer old pictures and engravings hanging in the 
entries and apartments. We ordered a lunch (the most 
delightful of English institutions, next to dinner) to be 
ready against our return, and then resumed our drive to 
Blenheim. 

The park-gate of Blenheim stands close to the end of 
the village street of Woodstock. Immediately on pass- 
ing through its portals we saw the stately palace in the 
distance, but made a wide circuit of the park before ap- 
proaching it. This noble park contains three thousand 
acres of land, and is fourteen miles in circumference. 
Having been, in part, a royal domain before it Mas 
granted to the Marlborough family, it contains many 
trees of unsurpassed antiquity, and has doubtless been 
the haunt of game and deer for centuries. We saw 
pheasants in abundance, feeding in the open lawns and 
glades; and the stags tossed their antlers and bounded 
away, not affrighted, but only shy and gamesome, as we 
drove by. It is a magnificent pleasure-ground, not too 
tamely kept, nor rigidly subjected within rule, but vast 
enough to have lapsed back into nature again, after all 
the pains that the landscape-gardeners of Queen Anne's 
time bestowed on it, when the domain of Blenheim was 
scientifically laid out. The great, knotted, slanting trunks 
of the old oaks do not now look as if man had much 
intermeddled with their growth and postures. The trees 
of later date, that were set out in the Great Duke's time, 
are arranged on the plan of the order of battle in which 



190 NEAR OXFORD. 

the illustrious commander ranked his troops at Blen- 
heim ; but the ground covered is so extensive, and the 
trees now so luxuriant, that the spectator is not dis- 
agreeably conscious of their standing in military array, 
as if Orpheus had summoned them together by beat of 
drum. The effect must have been very formal a hundred 
and fifty years ago, but has ceased to be so, — although 
the trees, I presume, have kept their ranks with even 
more fidelity than Marlborough's veterans did. 

One of the park-keepers, on horseback, rode beside 
our carriage, pointing out the choice views, and glimpses 
at the palace, as we drove through the domain. There 
is a very large artificial lake (to say the truth, it seemed 
to me fully worthy of being compared with the Welsh 
lakes, at least, if not with those of Westmoreland), which 
was created by Capability Brown, and fills the basin that 
he scooped for it, just as if Nature had poured these 
broad waters into one of her own valleys. It is a most 
beautiful object at a distance, and not less so on its imme- 
diate banks ; for the water is very pure, being supplied 
by a small river, of the choicest transparency, which was 
turned thitherward for the purpose. And Blenheim owes 
not merely this water-scenery, but almost all its other 
beauties, to the contrivance of man. Its natural features 
are not striking; but Art has effected such wonderful 
things that the uninstructed visitor would never guess that 
nearly the whole scene was but the embodied thought of 
a human mind. A skilful painter hardly does more for 
his blank sheet of canvas than the landscape-gardener, the 
planter, the arranger of trees, has done for the monoto- 
nous surface of Blenheim, — making the most of every 
undulation, — flinging down a hillock, a big lump of earth 
out of a giant's hand, wherever it was needed, — putting 
in beauty as often as there was a niche for it, — opening 



NEAR OXFORD. 191 

vistas to every point that deserved to be seen, and throw- 
ing a veil of impenetrable foliage around what ought to 
be hidden; — and then, to be sure, the lapse of a century 
has softened the harsh outline of man's labors, and has 
given the place back to Nature again with the addition 
of what consummate science could achieve. 

After driving a good way, we came to a battlemented 
tower and adjoining house, which used to be the resi- 
dence of the Ranger of Woodstock Park, who held charge 
of the property for the King before the Duke of Marl- 
borough possessed it. The keeper opened the door for 
us, and in the entrance-hall we found various things that 
had to do with the chase and woodland sports. We 
mounted the staircase, through several stories, up to the 
top of the tower, whence there was a view of the spires 
of Oxford, and of points much farther off, — very indis- 
tinctly seen, however, as is usually the case with the 
misty distances of England. Returning to the ground- 
floor, we were ushered into the room in which died Wil- 
mot, the wicked Earl of Rochester, who was Ranger of 
the Park in Charles II. 's time. It is a low and bare little 
room, with a window in front, and a smaller one behind ; 
and in the contiguous entrauce'-room there are the re- 
mains of an old bedstead, beneath the canopy of which, 
perhaps, Rochester may have made the penitent end that 
Bishop Burnet attributes to him. I hardly know what 
it is, in this poor fellow's character, which affects us with 
greater tenderness on his behalf than for all the other 
profligates of his day, who seem to have been neither 
better nor worse than himself. I rather suspect that he 
had a human heart which never quite died out of him, 
and the warmth of which is still faintly perceptible amid 
the dissolute trash which he left behind. 

Methinks, if such good fortune ever befell a bookish 



192 NEAR OXFORD. 

man, I should choose this lodge for my own residence, 
with the topmost room of the tower for a study, and all 
the seclusion of cultivated wiJdness beneath to ramble in. 
There being no such possibility, we drove on, catching 
glimpses of the palace in new points of view, and by and 
by came to Rosamond's Well. The particular tradition 
that connects Fair Rosamond with it is not now in my 
memory ; but if Rosamond ever lived and loved, and ever 
had her abode in the maze of Woodstock, it may well 
be believed that she and Henry sometimes sat beside this 
spring. It gushes out from a bank, through some old 
stone-work, and dashes its little cascade (about as abun- 
dant as one might turn out of a large pitcher) into a pool, 
whence it steals away towards the lake, which is not far 
removed. The water is exceedingly cold, and as pure as 
the legendary Rosamond was not, and is fancied to pos- 
sess medicinal virtues, like springs at which saints have 
quenched their thirst. There were two or three old wo- 
men and some children in attendance with tumblers, which 
they present to visitors, full of the consecrated water ; 
but most of us filled the tumblers for ourselves, and 
drank. 

Thence Ave drove to the Triumphal Pillar which was 
erected in honor of the Great Duke, and on the summit 
of which he stands, in a Roman garb, holding a winged 
figure of Victory in his hand, as an ordinary man might 
hold a bird. The column is I know not how many feet 
high, but lofty enough, at any rate, to elevate Marlbor- 
ough far above the rest of the world, and to be visible a 
long way off; and it is so placed in reference to other 
objects, that, wherever the hero wandered about his 
grounds, and especially as he issued from his mansion, 
he must inevitably have been reminded of his glory. In 
truth, until I came to Blenheim, I never had so positive 



NEAR OXFORD. lUo 

and material an idea of what Fame really is — of what the 
admiration of his country can do for a successful warrior 
— as I carry away with me and shall always retain. Un- 
less he had the moral force of a thousand men together, 
his egotism (beholding- himself everywhere, imbuing the 
entire soil, growing in the woods, rippling and gleaming 
in the water, and pervading the very air with his great - 
ness) must have been swollen within him like the liver 
of a Strasburg goose. On the huge tablets inlaid into 
the pedestal of the column, the entire Act of Parliament, 
bestowing Blenheim on the Duke of Marlborough and 
his posterity, is engraved in deep letters, painted black 
on the marble ground. The pillar stands exactly a mile 
from the principal front of the palace, in a straight line 
with the precise centre of its entrance-hall ; so that, as 
already said, it was the Duke's principal object of con- 
templation. 

We now proceeded to the palace-gate, which is a great 
pillared archway, of wonderful loftiness and state, giving 
admittance into a spacious quadrangle. A stout, elderly, 
and rather surly footman in livery appeared at the en- 
trance, and took possession of whatever canes, umbrellas, 
and parasols he could get hold of, in order to claim six- 
pence on our departure. This had a somewhat ludicrous 
effect. There is much public outcry against the mean- 
ness of the present Duke in his arrangements for the 
admission of visitors (chiefly, of course, his native coun- 
trymen) to view the magnificent palace which their fore- 
fathers bestowed upon his own. In many cases, it seems 
hard that a private abode should be exposed to the in- 
trusion of the public merely because the proprietor has 
inherited or created a splendor which attracts general 
curiosity; insomuch that his home loses its sanctity and 
seclusion for the very reason that it is better than other 

9 M 



194 NEAR OXFORD. 

men's houses. But in the case of Blenheim, the public 
have certainly an equitable claim to admission, both be- 
cause the fame of its first inhabitant is a national pos- 
session, and because the mansion was a national gift, one 
of the purposes of which was to be a token of gratitude 
and glory to the English people themselves. If a man 
chooses to be illustrious, he is very likely to incur some 
little inconveniences himself, ami entail them on his pos- 
terity. Nevertheless, his present Grace of Marlborough 
absolutely ignores the public claim above suggested, and 
(with a thrift of which even the hero of Blenheim him- 
self did not set the example) sells tickets admitting six 
persons at ten shillings ; if only one person enters the 
gate, he must pay for six ; and if there are seven in 
company, two tickets are required to admit them. The 
attendants, who meet you everywhere in the park and 
palace, expect fees on their own private account, —their 
noble master pocketing the ten shillings. But, to be sure, 
the visitor gets his money's worth, since it buys him the 
right to speak just as freely of the Duke of Marlborough 
as if he were the keeper of the Cremorne Gardens.* 

Passing through a gateway on the opposite side of the 
quadrangle, we had before us the noble classic front of 
the palace, with its two projecting wings. We ascended 
the lofty steps of the portal, and were admitted into the 
entrance-hall, the height of which, from floor to ceiling, 
is not much less than seventy feet, being the entire ele- 
vation of the edifice. The hall is lighted by windows in 

* The above was written two or three years ago, or more ; 
and the Duke of that day has since transmitted his coronet to 
his successor, who, we understand, has adopted much more lib- 
eral arrangements. There is seldom anything to criticise or 
complain of, as regards the facility of obtaining admission to 
interesting private houses in England. 



NEAR 0XF011D. 195 

the upper story, and, it being a clear, bright day, was 
very radiant with lofty sunshine, amid which a swallow 
was flitting to and fro. The ceiling was painted by Sir 
James Thornhill in some allegorical design (doubtless 
commemorative of Marlborough's victories), the purport 
of which I did not take the trouble to make out, — con- 
tent ing myself with the general effect, which was most 
splendidly and effectively ornamental. 

We were guided through the show-rooms by a very 
civil person, who allowed us to take pretty much our own 
time in looking at the pictures. The collection is ex- 
ceedingly valuable, — many of these works of Art having 
been presented to the Great Duke by the crowned heads 
of England or the Continent. One room was all aglow 
with pictures by Rubens ; and there were works of Ra- 
phael, and many other famous painters, any one of which 
would be sufficient to illustrate the meanest house that 
might contain it. I remember none of them, however 
(not being in a picture-seeing mood), so well as Van- 
dyck's large and familiar picture of Charles I. on horse- 
back, with a figure and face of melancholy dignity such 
as never by any other hand was put on canvas. Yet, on 
considering this face of Charles (which I find often re- 
peated in half-lengths) and translating it from the ideal 
into literalism, I doubt whether the unfortunate king was 
really a handsome or impressive-looking man : a high, 
thin-ridged nose, a meagre, hatchet face, and reddish 
hair and beard, — these are the literal facts. It is the 
painter's art that has thrown such pensive and shadowy 
grace around him. 

On our passage through this beautiful suite of apart- 
ments, we saw, through the vista of open doorways, a 
boy of ten or twelve years old coming towards us from 
the farther rooms. He had on a straw hat, a linen sack 



19G NEAR OXFORD. 

that had certainly been washed and re-washed for a sum- 
mer or two, and gray trousers a good deal worn, — a 
dress, in short, which an American mother in middle 
station would have thought too shabby for her darling 
school-boy's ordinary wear. This urchin's face was 
rather pale (as those of English children are apt to be, 
quite as often as our own), but he had pleasant eyes, an 
intelligent look, and an agreeable, boyish manner. It 
Mas Lord Sunderland, grandson of the present Duke, and 
heir — though not, I think, in the direct line — of the 
blood of the great Marlborough, and of the title and 
estate. 

After passing through the first suite of rooms, we were 
conducted through a corresponding suite on the opposite 
side of the entrance-hall. These latter apartments are- 
most richly adorned with tapestries, wrought and pre- 
sented to the first Duke by a sisterhood of Flemish nuns ; 
they look like great, glowing pictures, and completely 
cover the walls of the rooms. The designs purport to 
represent the Duke's battles and sieges ; and everywhere 
we see the hero himself, as large as life, and as gorgeous 
in scarlet aud gold as the holy sisters could make him, 
with a three-cornered hat and flowing wig, reining in his 
horse, and extending his leading-staff in the attitude of 
command. Next to Marlborough, Prince Eugene is the 
most prominent figure. In the way of upholstery, there 
can never have been anything more magnificent than 
these tapestries ; aud, considered as works of Art, they 
have quite as much merit as nine pictures out of ten. 

One whole wing of the palace is occupied by the 
library, a most noble room, with a vast perspective length 
from end to end. Its atmosphere is brighter and more 
cheerful than that of most libraries : a wonderful contrast 
to the old college -libraries of Oxford, and perhaps less 



NEAR OXFORD. 197 

sombre and suggestive of thouglitfulness than any large 
library ought to be : inasmuch as so many studious brains 
as have left their deposit on the shelves cannot have con- 
spired without producing a very serious and ponderous 
result. Both walls and ceiling are white, and there are 
elaborate doorways and fireplaces of white marble. The 
floor is of oak, so highly polished that our feet slipped 
upon it as if it had been New England ice. At one end 
of the room stands a statue of Queen Anne in her royal 
robes, which are so admirably designed and exquisitely 
wrought that the spectator certainly gets a strong con- 
ception of her royal dignity ; while the face of the statue, 
fleshy and feeble, doubtless conveys a suitable idea of her 
personal character. The marble of this work, long as it 
has stood there, is as white as snow just fallen, and must 
have required most faithful and religious care to keep it 
so. As for the volumes of the library, they are wired 
within the cases and turn their gilded backs upon the 
visitor, keeping their treasures of wit and wisdom just as 
intangible as if still in the unwrought mines of human 
thought. 

I remember nothing else in the palace, except the 
chapel, to which we were conducted last, and where we 
saw a splendid monument to the first Duke and Duchess, 
sculptured by Bysbraek, at the cost, it is said, of forty 
thousand pounds. The design includes the statues of the 
deceased dignitaries, and various allegorical flourishes, 
fantasies, and confusions ; and beneath sleep the great 
Duke and his proud wife, their veritable bones and dust, 
and probably all the Marlboroughs that have since died. 
It is not quite a comfortable idea, that these mouldy 
ancestors still inhabit, after their fashion, the house 
where their successors spend the passing day ; but the 
adulation lavished upon the hero of Blenheim could not 



198 NEAR OXFORD. 

have been consummated, unless the palace of his lifetime 
had become likewise a stately mausoleum over his re- 
mains, — and such we felt it all to be, after gazing at his 
tomb. 

The next business Avas to see the private gardens. An 
old Scotch under-gardener admitted us and led the way, 
and seemed to have a fair prospect of earning the fee all 
by himself ; but by and by another respectable Scotch- 
man made his appearance and took us in charge, proving 
to be the head-gardener in person. He was extremely 
intelligent and agreeable, talking both scientifically and 
lovingly about trees and plants, of which there is every 
variety capable of English cultivation. Positively, the 
Garden of Eden cannot have been more beautiful than 
this private garden of Blenheim. It contains three hun- 
dred acres, and by the artful circumlocution of the paths, 
and the undulations, and the skilfully interposed clumps 
of trees, is made to appear limitless. The sylvan delights 
of a whole country are compressed into this space, as 
whole fields of Persian roses go to the concoction of an 
* ounce of precious attar. The world within that garden- 
fence is not the same weary and dusty world with which 
we outside mortals are conversant ; it is a finer, lovelier, 
more harmonious Nature; and the Great Mother lends 
herself kindly to the gardener's will, knowing that he 
will make evident the half-obliterated traits of her pris- 
tine and ideal beauty, and allow her to take all the credit 
and praise to herself. I doubt whether there is ever any 
winter within that precinct, — any clouds, except the 
fleecy ones of summer. The sunshine that I saw there 
rests upon my recollection of it as if it were eternal. 
The lawns and glades are like the memory of places 
where one has wandered when first in love. 

What a good and happy life might be spent in a para- 



NEAR OXFORD. 199 

dise like this ! And yet, at that very moment, the be- 
sotted Duke (ah ! I have let out a secret which I meant 
to keep to myself; but the ten shillings must pay for all) 
was in that very garden (for the guide told us so, and 
cautioned our young people not to be too uproarious), 
and, if in a condition for arithmetic, was thinking of noth- 
ing nobler than how many ten-shilling tickets had that 
day been sold. Republican as I am, I should still love to 
think that noblemen lead noble lives, and that all this 
stately and beautiful environment may serve to elevate 
them a little way above the rest of us. If it fail to do 
so, the disgrace falls equally upon the whole race of mor- 
tals as on themselves ; because it proves that no more 
favorable conditions of existence would eradicate our 
vices and weaknesses. How sad, if this be so ! Even a 
herd of swine, eating the acorns under those magnificent 
oaks of Blenheim, would be cleanlier and of better habits 
than ordinary swine. 

Well* all that I have written is pitifully meagre, as a 
description of Blenheim; and I hate to leave it without 
some more adequate expression of the noble edifice, with 
its rich domain, all as I saw them in that beautiful sun- 
shine ; for, if a day had been chosen out of a hundred 
years, it could not have been a finer one. But I must 
give up the attempt ; only further remarking that the 
finest trees here were cedars, of wdiich I saw one — and 
there may have been many such — immense in girth, and 
not less than three centuries old. I likewise saw a vast 
heap of laurel, two hundred feet in circumference, all 
growing from one root ; and the gardener offered to 
show us another growth of twice that stupendous size. 
If the Great Duke himself had been buried in that spot, 
his heroic heart could not have been the seed of a more 
plentiful crop of laurels. 



200 NEAR OXFORD. 

We now went back to the Black Bear, and sat down 
to a cold collation, of which wc ate abundantly, and 
drank (in the good old English fashion) a due proportion 
of various delightful liquors. A stranger in England, in 
his rambles to various quarters of the country, may learn 
little in regard to wines (for the ordinary English taste 
is simple, though sound, in that particular), but he makes 
acquaintance with more varieties of hop and malt liquor 
than he previously supposed to exist. I remember a sort 
of foaming stuff, called hop-champagne, which is very 
vivacious, and appears to be a hybrid between ale and 
bottled cider. Another excellent tipple for warm weather 
is concocted by mixing brown-stout or bitter ale with 
ginger-beer, the foam of which stirs up the heavier liquor 
from its depths, forming a compound of singular vivacity 
and sufficient body. But of all things ever brewed from 
malt (unless it be the Trinity Ale of Cambridge, which 
I drank long afterwards, and which Barry Cornwall has 
celebrated in immortal verse), commend me to the Arch- 
deacon, as the Oxford scholars call it, in honor of the 
jovial dignitary who first taught these erudite worthies 
how to brew their favorite nectar. John Barleycorn has 
given his very heart to this admirable liquor; it is a 
superior kind of ale, the Prince of Ales, with a richer 
flavor and a mightier spirit than you can find elsewhere 
in this weary world. Much have we been strengthened 
and encouraged by the potent blood of the Archdeacon ! 

A few days after our excursion to Blenheim, the same 
party set. forth, in two flies, on a tour to some other 
places of interest in the neighborhood of Oxford. It was 
again a delightful day; and, in truth, every day, of late, 
had been so pleasant that it seemed as if each must be 
the very last of such perfect weather ; and yet the long 
succession had given us confidence in as many more to 



NEAR OXFORD. 201 

come. The climate of England lias been shamefully 
maligned, its sulkiness and asperities are not nearly so 
offensive as Englishmen tell us (their climate being the 
only attribute of their country which they never over- 
value) ; and the really good summer- weather is the very 
kindest and sweetest that the world knows. 

We first drove to the village of Cunmor, about six 
miles from Oxford, and alighted at the entrance of the 
church. Here, while waiting for the keys, we looked at 
an old wall of the churchyard, piled up of loose gray 
stones which are said to have once formed a portion of 
Cunmor Hall, celebrated in Mickle's ballad and Scott's 
romance. The ball must have been in very close vicinity 
to the church, — not more than twenty yards off; and I 
waded through the long, dewy grass of the churchyard, 
and tried to peep over the wall, in hopes to discover some 
tangible and traceable remains of the edifice. But the 
wall was just too high to be overlooked, and difficult to 
clamber over without tumbling down some of the stones; 
so I took the word of one of our party, who had been 
here before, that there is nothing interesting on the other 
side. The churchyard is in rather a neglected state, and 
seems not to have been mown for the benefit of the 
parson's cow ; it contains a good many gravestones, of 
which I remember only some upright memorials of slate 
to individuals of the name of Tabbs. 

Soon a woman arrived with the key of the church- 
door, and we entered the simple old edifice, which has 
the pavement of lettered tombstones, the sturdy pillars 
and low arches and* other ordinary characteristics of an 
English country church. One or two pews, probably 
those of the gentlefolk of the neighborhood, were better 
furnished than the rest, but all in a modest style. Near 
the high altar, in the holiest place, there is an oblong, 
9* 



202 NEAR OXFORD. 

angular, ponderous tomb of blue marble, built against the 
wall, and surmounted by a carved canopy of the same 
material; and over the tomb, and beneath the canopy, 
are two monumental brasses, such as we oftener see in- 
laid into a church pavement. On these brasses are en- 
graved the figures of a gentleman in armor and a lady in 
an antique garb, each about a foot high, devoutly kneeling 
in prayer ; and there is a long Latin inscription likewise 
cut into the enduring brass, bestowing the highest eulo- 
gies on the character of Anthony Forster, who, with 1 lis 
virtuous dame, lies buried beneath this tombstone. His 
is the knightly figure that kneels above ; and if Sir "Wal- 
ter Scott ever saw this tomb, he must hive had an even 
greater than common disbelief in laudatory epitaphs, to 
venture on depicting Anthony Forster in such hues as 
blacken him in the romance. For my part, I read the 
inscription in full faith, and believe the poor deceased 
gentleman to be a much-wronged individual, with good 
grounds for bringing an action of slander in the courts 
above. 

But the circumstance, lightly as we treat it, has its 
serious moral. What nonsense it is, this anxiety, which 
so worries us, about our good fame, or our bad fame, 
after death ! If it were of the slightest real moment, our 
reputations would have been placed by Providence more 
in our own power, and less in other people's, than we 
now find them to be. If poor Anthony Forster happens 
to have met Sir Walter in the other world, I doubt 
whether he has ever thought it worth while to complain 
of the latter's misrepresentations. 

We did not remain long in the church, as it contains 
nothing else of interest; and driving through the village, 
we passed a pretty large and rather antique-looking inn, 
bearing the sign of the Bear and Bagged Staff. It could 



NEAR OXFORD. 203 

not be so old, however, by at least a hundred years, as 
Giles Gosling's time ; nor is there any other object to 
remind the visitor of the Elizabethan age, unless it be 
a few ancient cottages, that are perhaps of still earlier 
date. Cumnor is not nearly so large a village, nor a 
place of such mark, as one anticipates from its romantic 
and legendary fame ; but, being still inaccessible by rail- 
way, it has retained more of a sylvan character than we 
often find in English country towns. In this retired 
neighborhood the road is narrow aud bordered with 
grass, and sometimes interrupted by gates ; the hedges 
grow in unpruned luxuriance ; there is not that close- 
shaven neatness and trimness that characterize the ordi- 
nary English landscape. The whole scene conveys the 
idea of seclusion and remoteness. We met no travellers, 
whether on foot or otherwise. 

I cannot very distinctly trace out this day's peregrina- 
tions ; but, after leaving Cumnor a few miles behind us, 
I think we came to a ferry over the Thames, where an 
old woman served as ferryman, and pulled a boat across 
by means of a rope stretching from shore to shore. Our 
two vehicles being thus placed on the other side, we re- 
sumed our drive, — first glancing, however, at the old 
woman's antique cottage, with its stone floor, and the 
circular settle round the kitchen fireplace, which was 
quite in the mediaeval English style. 

We next stopped at Stanton Hareourt, where we 
were received at the parsonage with a hospitality which 
we should take delight in describing, if it were allowable 
to make public acknowledgment of the private and per- 
sonal kindnesses which we never failed to find rendy for 
our needs. An American in an English house will soon 
adopt the opinion that the English are the very kindest 
people on earth, and will retain that idea as long, at 



204 NEAR OXFORD. 

least, as he remains on the inner side of the threshold. 
Their magnetism is of a kind that repels strongly while 
you keep beyond a certain limit, but attracts as forcibly 
if you get within the magic line. 

It was at this place, if I remember right, that I heard 
a gentleman ask a friend of mine whether he was the 
author of " The lied Letter A " ; and, after some con- 
sideration (for he did not seem to recognize his own 
book, at first, under this improved title), our countryman 
responded, doubtfully, that he believed so. The gentle- 
man proceeded to inquire whether our friend had spent 
much time in America, — evidently thinking that he 
must have been caught young, and have had a tincture 
of English breeding, at least, if not birth, to speak the 
language so tolerably, and appear so much like other 
people. This insular narrowness is exceedingly queer, 
and of very frequent occurrence, and is quite as much 
a characteristic of men of education and culture as of 
clowns. 

Stanton Harcourt is a very curious old place. It was 
formerly the seat of the ancient family of Harcourt, 
which now has its principal abode at Nuneham Courtney, 
a few miles off. The parsonage is a relic of the family 
mansion, or castle, other portions of which are close at 
hand; for, across the garden, rise two gray towers, both 
of them picturesquely venerable, and interesting for more 
than their antiquity. One of these towers, in its entire 
capacity, from height to depth, constituted the kitchen of 
the ancient castle, and is still used for domestic pur- 
poses, although it has not, nor ever had, a chimney ; or 
we might rather say, it is itself one vast chimney, with a 
hearth of thirty feet square, and a flue and aperture of 
the same size. There are two huge fireplaces within, 
and the interior walls of the tower are blackened with 



NEAR OXFORD. 205 

the smoke that for centuries used to gush forth from 
them, and climb upward, seeking- an exit through some 
wide air-holes in the conical roof, full seventy feet above. 
These lofty openings were capable of being so arranged, 
with reference to the wind, that the cooks are said to 
have been seldom troubled by the smoke ; and here, no 
doubt, they were accustomed to roast oxen whole, with 
as little fuss and ado as a modern cook would roast a 
fowl. The inside of the tower is very dim and sombre 
(being nothing but rough stone walls, lighted only from 
the apertures above mentioned), and has still a pungent 
odor of smoke and soot, the reminiscence of the fires and 
feasts of generations 1 hat have passed away. Methinks 
the extremest range of domestic economy lies between 
an American cooking-stove and the ancient kitchen, 
seventy dizzy feet in height and all one fireplace, of 
Stanton Harcourt, 

Now — the place being without a parallel in England, 
and therefore necessarily beyond the experience of an 
American — it is somewhat remarkable, that, while we 
stood gazing at this kitchen, I was haunted and per- 
plexed by an idea that somewhere or other I had seen 
just this strange spectacle before. The height, the black- 
ness, the dismal void, before my eyes, seemed as familiar 
as the decorous neatness of my grandmother's kitchen ; 
only my unaccountable memory of the scene was lighted 
up with an image of lurid fires blazing all round the dim 
interior circuit of the tower. I had never before had so 
pertinacious an attack, as I could not but suppose it, of 
that odd state of mind wherein we fitfully and tcasingly 
remember some previous scene or incident, of which the 
one now passing appears to be but the echo and redupli- 
cation. Though the explanation of the mystery did not 
for some time occur to me, I may as well conclude the 



206 NEAR OXFORD. 

matter here. Iu a letter of Pope's, addressed to the 
Duke of Buckingham, there is an account of Stanton 
Harcourt (as I now find, although the name is not men- 
tioned), where he resided while translating a part of the 
"Iliad." It is one of the most admirable pieces of de- 
scription in the language, — playful and picturesque, with 
fine touches of humorous pathos, — and conveys as per- 
fect a picture as ever was drawn of a decayed English 
country-house ; and among other rooms, most of which 
have since crumbled down and disappeared, he dashes off 
the grim aspect of this kitchen, — which, moreover, he 
peoples with witches, engaging Satan himself as head- 
cook, who stirs the infernal caldrons that seethe and 
bubble over the fires. This letter, and others relative to 
his abode here, were very familiar to my earlier reading, 
and, remaining still fresh at the bottom of my memory, 
caused the weird and ghostly sensation that came over 
me on beholding the real spectacle that had formerly 
been made so vivid to my imagination. 

Our next visit was to the church which stands close 
by, and is quite as ancient as the remnants of the castle. 
In a chapel or side-aisle, dedicated to the Harcourts, are 
found some very interesting family monuments, — and 
among them, recumbent on a tombstone, the figure of an 
armed knight of the Lancastrian party, who was slain in 
the Wars of the Roses. His features, dress, and armor 
are painted in colors, still wonderfully fresh, and there 
still blushes the symbol of the Red Rose, denoting the 
faction for which he fought and died. His head rests on 
a marble or alabaster helmet; and on the tomb lies the 
veritable helmet, it is to be presumed, which he wore in 
battle, — a ponderous iron case, with the visor complete, 
and remnants of the gilding that once covered it. The 
crest, is a large peacock, not of metal, but of wood. 



NEAR OXFORD. 207 

Very possibly, this helmet was but an heraldic adorn- 
ment of his tomb ; and, indeed, it seems strange that it 
has not been stolen before now, especially in Cromwell's 
time, when knightly tombs were little respected, and 
when armor was in request. However, it is needless to 
dispute with the dead knight about the identity of his 
iron pot, and we may as well allow it to be the very same 
that so often gave him the headache in his lifetime. 
Leaning against the wall, at the foot of the tomb, is the 
shaft of a spear, with a wo fully tattered and utterly faded 
banner appended to it, — the knightly banner beneath 
which he marshalled his followers in the field. As it 
was absolutely falling to pieces, I tore off one little bit, 
no bigger than a finger-nail, and put it into my waistcoat- 
pocket ; but seeking it subsequently, it was not to be 
found. 

On the opposite side of the little chapel, two or three 
yards from this tomb, is another monument, on which lie, 
side by side, one of the same knightly race of Harcourt.s, 
and his lady. The tradition of the family is, that this 
knight was the standard-bearer of Henry of Richmond 
in the Battle of Bos worth Field ; and a banner, sup- 
posed to be the same that he carried, now droops over 
his effigy. It is just such a colorless silk rag as the 
one already described. The knight has the order of the 
Garter on his knee, and the lady wears it on her left 
arm, — an odd place enough for a garter; but, if worn 
in its proper locality, it could not be decorously visible. 
The complete preservation and good condition of these 
statues, even to the minutest adornment of the sculpture, 
and their very noses, — the most vulnerable part of a 
marble man, as of a living one, — are miraculous. Ex- 
cept in Westminster Abbey, among the chapels of the 
kings, I have seen none so well preserved. Perhaps 



208 NEAR OXFORD. 

the j owe it to the loyalty of Oxfordshire, diffused 
throughout its neighborhood by the influence of the 
University, during the great Civil War and the rule of 
the Parliament. It speaks well, too, for the upright and 
kindly character of this old family, that the peasantry, 
among whom they had lived for ages, did not desecrate 
their tombs, when it might have been done with impunity. 

There are other and more recent memorials of the Har- 
courts, one of which is the tomb of the last lord, who 
died about a hundred years ago. His figure, like those 
of his ancestors, lies on the top of his tomb, clad, not 
in armor, but in his robes as a peer. The title is now 
extinct, but the family survives in a younger branch, and 
still holds this patrimonial estate, though they have long 
since quitted it as a residence. 

We next went to see the ancient fish-ponds appertain- 
ing to the mansion, and which used to be of vast dietary 
importance to the family in Catholic times, and when 
fish was not otherwise attainable. There are two or 
three, or more, of these reservoirs, one of which is of 
very respectable size, — large enough, indeed, to be really 
a picturesque object, with its grass-green borders, and the 
trees drooping over it, and the towers of the castle and 
the church reflected within the weed-grown depths of its 
smooth mirror. A sweet fragrance, as it were, of ancient 
time and present quiet and seclusion was breathing all 
around; the sunshine of to-day had a mellow charm of 
antiquity in its brightness. These ponds are said still 
to breed abundance of such fish as love deep and quiet 
waters; but I saw only some minnows, and one or two 
snakes, which were lying among the weeds on the top of 
the water, sunning and bathing themselves at once. 

I mentioned that there were two towers remaining of 
the old castle : the one containing the kitchen we have 



NEAll OXFOIID. 209 

already visited ; the other, still more interesting, is next 
to be described. It is some seventy feet high, gray and 
reverend, bat in excellent repair, though I could not 
perceive that anything had been done to renovate it. 
The basement story was once the family chapel, and is, 
of course, still a consecrated spot. At one corner of the 
tower is a circular turret, within which a narrow stair- 
case, with worn steps of stone, winds round and round 
as it climbs upward, giving access to a chamber on each 
floor, and finally emerging on the battlemented roof. 
Ascending this turret-stair, and arriving at the third 
story, we entered a chamber, not large, though occupy- 
ing the whole area of the tower, and lighted by a win- 
dow on each side. It was wainscoted from floor to ceil- 
ing with dark oak, and had a little fireplace in one of the 
corners. The window-panes were small and set in lead. 
The curiosity of this room is, that it was once the resi- 
dence of Pope, and that he here wrote a considerable part 
of the translation of Homer, and likewise, no doubt, the 
admirable letters to which I have referred above. The 
room once contained a record by himself, scratched with 
a diamond on one of the window-panes (since removed 
for safe-keeping to Nuneham Courtney, where it was 
shown me), purporting that he had here finished the 
fifth book of the " Iliad " on such a day. 

A poet has a fragrance about him, such as no other 
human being is gifted withal; it is indestructible, and 
clings forevermore to everything that he has touched. I 
was not impressed, at Blenheim, with any sense that the 
mighty Duke still haunted the palace that was created 
for him ; but here, after a century and a half, we are still 
conscious of the presence of that decrepit little figure of 
Queen Anne's time, although he was merely a casual 
guest in the old tower, during one or two summer 

N 



210 NEAR OXFORD. 

months. However brief the time and slight the connec- 
tion, his spirit cannot be exorcised so long as the tower 
stands. In my mind, moreover, Pope, or any other 
person with an available claim, is right in adhering to 
the spot, dead or alive ; for I never saw a chamber that 
I should like betler to inhabit, — so comfortably small, 
in such a safe and inaccessible seclusion, and with a 
varied landscape from each window. One of them looks 
upon the church, close at hand, and down into the green 
churchyard, extending almost to the foot of the tower ; 
the others have views wide and far, over a gently undu- 
lating tract of country. If desirous of a loftier elevation, 
about a dozen more steps of the turret-stair will bring 
the occupant to the summit of the tower, — where Pope 
used to come, no doubt, in the summer evenings, and 
peep — poor little shrimp that he was! — through the 
embrasures of the battlement. 

From Stanton Harcourt we drove — I forget how far 
— to a point where a boat was waiting for us upon the 
Thames, or some other stream; for I am ashamed to 
confess my ignorance of the precise geographical wherea- 
bout. We were, at any rate, some miles above Oxford, 
and, I should imagine, pretty near one of the sources of 
England's mighty river. It was little more than wide 
enough for the boat, with extended oars, to pass, — shal- 
low, too, and bordered with bulrushes and water-weeds, 
which, in some places, quite overgrew the surface of the 
river from bank to bank. The shores were flat and 
meadow-like, and sometimes, the boatman told us, are 
overflowed by the rise of the stream. The water looked 
clean and pure, but not particularly transparent, though 
enough so to show us that the bottom is very much weed- 
grown; and I was told that the weed is an American 
production, brought to England with importations ot 



NEAK OXFORD. 211 

timber, and now threatening to choke up the Thames 
and other English rivers. I wonder it docs not try its 
obstructive powers upon the Merrimack, the Connecticut, 
or the Hudson, — not to speak of the St. Lawrence or 
the Mississippi ! 

It was an open boat, with cushioned seats astern, com- 
fortably accommodating our party ; the day continued 
sunny and warm, and perfectly still ; the boatman, well 
trained to his business, managed the oars skilfully and 
vigorously ; and we went down the stream quite as 
swiftly as it was desirable to go, the scene being so 
pleasant, and the passing hours so thoroughly agreeable. 
The river grew a little wider and deeper, perhaps, as we 
glided on, but was still an inconsiderable stream : for it 
had a good deal more than a hundred miles to meander 
through before it should bear fleets on its bosom, and re- 
flect palaces and towers and Parliament houses and dingy 
and sordid piles of various structure, as it rolled two and 
fro with the tide, dividing London asunder. Not, in 
truth, that I ever saw any edifice whatever reflected in 
its turbid breast, when the sylvan stream, as we beheld it 
now, is swollen into the Thames at London. 

Once, on our voyage, we had to land, while the boat- 
man and some other persons drew our skiff round some 
rapids, which we could not otherwise have passed ; an- 
other time, the boat went through a lock. We, mean- 
while, stepped ashore to examine the ruins of the old 
nunnery of Godstowe, where Fair Rosamond secluded 
herself, after being separated from her royal lover. There 
is a long line of ruinous wall, and a shattered tower at one 
of the angles ; the whole much ivy-grown, — brimming 
over, indeed, with clustering ivy, which is rooted inside of 
the walls. The nunnery is now, I believe, held in lease 
by the city of Oxford, which has converted its precincts 



212 NEAR OXFORD. 

into a barn-yard. The gate was under lock and key, so 
that we could merely look at the outside, and soon re- 
sumed our places in the boat. 

At three o'clock or thereabouts (or sooner or later, — 
for I took little heed of time, and only wished that these 
delightful wanderings might last forever; we reached 
Folly Bridge, at Oxford. Here we took possession of a 
spacious barge, with a house in it, and a comfortable din- 
ing-room or drawing-room within the house, and a level 
roof, on which we could sit at ease, or dance if so inclined. 
These barges are common at Oxford, — some very splen- 
did ones being owned by the students of the different col- 
leges, or by clubs. They are drawn by horses, like canal- 
boats ; and a horse being attached to our own barge, lie 
trotted off at a reasonable pace, and we slipped through 
the water behind him, with a gentle and pleasant motion, 
which, save for the constant vicissitude of cultivated scen- 
ery, was like no motion at all. It was life without the 
trouble of living; nothing was ever more quietly agree- 
able. In this happy state of mind and body we gazed at 
Christ Church meadows, as we passed, and at the re- 
ceding spires and towers of Oxford, and on a good deal 
of pleasant variety along the banks : young men rowing 
or fishing ; troops of naked boys bathing, as if this were 
Arcadia, in the simplicity of the Golden Age; country- 
houses, cottages, water-side inns, all with something fresh 
about them, as not being sprinkled with the dust of the 
highway. We were a large party now ; for a number of 
additional guests had joined us at Folly Bridge, and we 
comprised poets, novelists, scholars, sculptors, painters, 
architects, men and women of renown, dear friends, gen- 
ial, outspoken, open-hearted Englishmen, — all voyaging 
onward together, like the wise ones of Gotham in a bowl. 
I remember not a single annoyance, except, indeed, that 



NEAR OXFORD. £13 

a swarm of wasps came aboard of us and alighted on the 
head of one of our young gentlemen, attracted by the 
scent of tlie pomatum which he had been rubbing into 
his hair. He was the only victim, and his small trouble 
the one little flaw in our day's felicity, to put us in mind 
that we were mortal. 

Meanwhile a table had been laid in the interior of our 
barge, and spread with cold ham, cold fowl, cold pigeon- 
pie, cold beef, and other substantial cheer, such as the 
English love, and Yankees too, — besides tarts, and 
cakes, and pears, and plums, — not forgetting, of course, 
a goodly provision of port, sherry, and champagne, and 
bitter ale, which is- like mother's milk to an Englishman, 
and soon grows equally acceptable to his American cous- 
in. By the time these matters had been properly attend- 
ed to, we had arrived at that part of the Thames which 
passes by Nunehain Courtney, a fine estate belonging to 
the Harcourts, and the present residence of the family. 
Here we landed, and, climbing a steep slope from the 
river-side, paused a moment or two to look at an archi- 
tectural object, called the Carfax, the purport of which I 
do not well understand. Thence we proceeded onward, 
through the loveliest park and woodland scenery I ever 
saw, and under as beautiful a declining sunshine as heav- 
en ever shed over earth, to the stately mansion-house. 

As we here cross a private threshold, it is not allow- 
able to pursue my feeble narrative of this delightful 
day with the same freedom as heretofore ; so, perhaps, I 
may as well bring it to a close. I may mention, how- 
ever, that I saw the library, a fine, large apartment, hung 
round with portraits of eminent literary men, principally 
of the last century, most of whom were familiar guests 
of the Harcourts. The house itself is about eighty years 
old, and is built in the classic style, as if the family had 



214 NEAR OXFORD. 

been anxious to diverge as far as possible from the Gothic 
picturesqueness of their old abode at Stanton Harcourt. 
The grounds were laid out in part by Capability Brown, 
and seemed to me even more beautiful than those of 
Blenheim. Mason the poet, a friend of the house, gave 
the design of a portion of the garden. Of the whole 
place I will not be niggardly of my rude Transatlantic 
praise, but be bold to say that it appeared to me as per- 
fect as anything earthly can be, — utterly and entirely 
finished, as if the years and generations had done all that 
the hearts and minds of the successive owners could 
contrive for a spot they dearly loved. Such homes as 
Nuneham Courtney are among the splendid results of 
long hereditary possession ; and we Republicans, whose 
households melt away like new-fallen snow in a spring 
morning, must content ourselves with our many counter- 
balancing advantages, — for this one, so apparently de- 
sirable to the far-projecting selfishness of our nature, we 
are certain never to attain. 

It must not be supposed, nevertheless, that Nuneham 
Courtney is one of the great show-places of England. It 
is merely a fair specimen of the better class of counl rv- 
seats, and has a hundred rivals, and many superiors, in 
the features of beauty, and expansive, manifold, redun- 
dant comfort, which most impressed me. A moderate 
man might be content with such a home, — that is all. 

And now I take leave of Oxford without even an at- 
tempt to describe it, — there being no literary faculty, 
attainable or conceivable by me, which can avail to put it 
adequately, or even tolerably, upon paper. It must re- 
main its own sole expression ; and those whose sad for- 
tune it may be never to behold it have no better resource 
than to dream about gray, weather-stained, ivy-grown 
ecliGccs, wrought with quaint Golhic ornament, and 



NEAR OXFORD. 215 

standing around grassy quadrangles, where cloistered 
walks have echoed to the quiet footsteps of twenty 
generations, — lawns and gardens of luxurious repose, 
shadowed with canopies of foliage, and lit up with sunny 
glimpses through archways of great boughs, — spires, 
towers, and turrets, each with its history and legend, — 
dimly magnificent chapels, with painted windows of rare 
beauty and brilliantly diversified hues, creating an atmos- 
phere of richest gloom, — vast college-halls, high-win- 
dowed, oaken-panelled, and hung round with portraits of 
the men, iu every age, whom the University has nurtured 
to be illustrious, — long vistas of alcoved libraries, where 
the wisdom and learned folly of all time is shelved, — 
kitchens (we throw in this feature by way of ballast, and 
because it would not be English Oxford without its beef 
and beer), with huge fireplaces, capable of roasting a 
hundred joints at once, — and cavernous cellars, where 
rows of piled-up hogsheads seethe and fume with that 
mighty malt-liquor which is the true milk of Alma Ma- 
ter ; make all these things vivid in your dream, and you 
will never know nor believe how inadequate is the result 
to represent even the merest outside of Oxford. 

We feel a genuine reluctance to conclude this article 
without making our grateful acknowledgments, by name, 
to a gentleman whose overflowing kindness was the main 
condition of all our sight-sceings and enjoyments. De- 
lightful as will always be our recollection of Oxford and 
its neighborhood, we partly suspect that it owes much of 
its happy coloring to the genial medium through which 
the objects were presented to us, — to the kindly magic 
of a hospitality unsurpassed, within our experience, in 
the quality of making the guest contented with his host, 
with himself, and everything about him. He has insep- 
arably mingled his image with our remembrance of the 
Spires of Oxford. 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OP BURNS. 




E left Carlisle at a little past eleven, and within 
the half-hour were at Gretna Green. Thence 
we rushed onward into Scotland through a flat 
and dreary tract of country, consisting mainly of desert 
and hog, where probably the moss-troopers were accus- 
tomed to take refuge after their raids into England. 
Anon, however, the hills hove themselves up to view, 
occasionally attaining a height which might almost be 
called mountainous. In about two hours we reached 
Dumfries, and alighted at the station there. 

Chill as the Scottish summer is reputed to be, we 
found it an awfully hot day, not a whit less so than the 
day before; but we sturdily adventured through the 
burning sunshine up into the town, inquiring our way to 
the residence of Burns. The street leading from the 
station is called Shakespeare Street ; and at its farther 
extremity we read "Burns Street" on a corner-house, — 
the avenue thus designated having been formerly known 
as "Mill-Hole Brae." It is a vile lane, paved with 
small, hard stones from side to side, and bordered by 
cottages or mean houses of whitewashed stone, joining 
one to another along the whole length of the street. 
With not a tree, of course, or a blade of grass between 
the paving-stones, the narrow lane was as hot as Tophet, 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 217 

and reeked with a genuine Scotch odor, being infested 
with unwashed children, and altogether in a state of 
chronic filth ; although some women seemed to be hope- 
lessly scrubbing the thresholds of their wretched dwell- 
ings. I never saw an outskirt of a town less fit for a 
poet's residence, or in which it would be more miserable 
for any man of cleanly predilections to spend his days. 

We asked for Burns' s dwelling; and a woman pointed 
across t lie street to a two-story house, built of stone,- and 
whitewashed, like its neighbors, but perhaps of a little 
more respectable aspect than most of them, though I 
hesitate in saying so. It was not a separate structure, 
but under the same continuous roof with the next. 
There was an inscription on the door, bearing no refer- 
ence to Burns, but indicating that the house was now 
occupied by a ragged or industrial school. On knocking, 
we were instantly admitted by a servant-girl, who smiled 
intelligently when we told our errand, and showed us 
into a low and very plain parlor, not more than twelve 
or fifteen feet square. A young woman, who seemed to 
be a teacher in the school, soon appeared, and told us 
that this had been Burns's usual sitting-room, and that 
he had written many of his songs here. 

She then led us up a narrow staircase into a little bed- 
chamber over the parlor. Connecting with it, there is a 
very small room, or windowed closet, which Burns used 
as a study ; and the bedchamber itself was the one where 
he slept in his later lifetime, and in which he died at, last. 
Altogether, it is an exceedingly unsuitable place for a 
pastoral and rural poet to live or die in, — even more 
unsatisfactory than Shakespeare's house, which has a cer- 
tain homely picturesqueness that contrasts favorably with 
the suburban sordidness of the abode before us. The 
narrow lane, the paving-stones, and the contiguity of 
10 



218 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

wretched hovels are depressing to remember; and the 
steam of them (such is our human weakness) might 
almost make the poet's memory less fragrant. 

As already observed, it was an intolerably hot day. 
After leaving the house, we found our way into the prin- 
cipal street of the town, which, it may be fair to say, is 
of very different aspect from the wretched outskirt above 
described. Entering a hotel (in which, as a Dumfries 
guide-book assured us, Prince Charles Edward had once 
spent a night), we rested and refreshed ourselves, and 
then set forth in quest of the mausoleum of Burns. 

Coming to St. Michael's Church, we saw a man dig- 
ging a grave, and, scrambling out of the hole, he let us 
into the churchyard, which was crowded full of monu- 
ments. Their general shape and construction are peculiar 
to Scotland, being a perpendicular tablet of marble or 
other stone, within a framework of the same material, 
somewhat resembling the frame of a looking-glass ; and, 
all over the churchyard, these sepulchral memorials rise 
to the height of ten, fifteen, or twenty feet, forming quite 
an imposing collection of monuments, but inscribed with 
names of small general significance. It was easy, indeed, 
to ascertain the rank of those who slept below; for in 
Scotland it is the custom to put the occupation of the 
buried personage (as " Skinner," " Shoemaker," "Elesh- 
er") on his tombstone. As another peculiarity, wives 
are buried under their maiden names, instead of those of 
their husbands ; thus giving a disagreeable impression 
that the married pair have bidden each other an eternal 
farewell on the edge of the grave. 

There was a foot-path through this crowded church- 
yard, sufficiently well worn to guide us to the grave of 
Burns ; but a woman followed behind us, who, it ap- 
peared, kept the key of the mausoleum, and was privi- 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 219 

leged to show it to strangers. The monument is a sort 
of Grecian temple, with pilasters and a dome, covering a 
space of about twenty feet square. It was formerly open 
to all the inclemencies of the Scotch atmosphere, but is 
now protected and shut in by large squares of rough 
glass, each pane being of the size of one whole side of the 
structure. The woman unlocked the door, and admitted 
us into the interior. Inlaid into the floor of the mauso- 
leum is the gravestone of Burns, — the very same that 
was laid over his grave by Jean Armour, before this 
monument was built. Displayed against the surrounding 
wall is a marble statue of Burns at the plough, with the 
Genius of Caledonia summoning the ploughman to turn 
poet. Methought it was not a very successful piece of 
work; for the plough was better sculptured than the 
man, and the man, though heavy and cloddish, was more 
effective than the goddess. Our guide informed us that 
an old man of ninety, who knew Burns, certifies this 
statue to be very like the original. 

The bones of the poet, and of Jean Armour, and of 
some of their children, lie in the vault over which we 
stood. Our guide (who was intelligent, in her own plain 
way, and very agreeable to talk Avithal) said that the 
vault was opened about three weeks ago, on occasion of 
the burial of the eldest son of Burns. The poet's bones 
were disturbed, and the dry skull, once so brimming over 
with powerful thought and bright and tender fantasies, 
was taken away, and kept for several days by a Dumfries 
doctor. It has since been deposited in a new leaden 
coffin, and restored to the vault. We learned that there is 
a surviving daughter of Bums's eldest son, and daugh- 
ters likewise of the two younger sons, — and, besides 
these, an illegitimate posterity by the eldest son, who 
appears to have been of disreputable life in his younger 



220 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

days. He inherited his father's failings, with some faint 
shadow, I have also understood, of the great qualities 
which have made the world tender of his father's vices 
and weaknesses. 

We listened readily enough to this paltry gossip, but 
found that it robbed the poet's memory of some of the 
reverence that was its due. Indeed, this talk over his 
grave had very much the same tendency and effect as the 
home-scene of his life, which we had been visiting just 
previously. Beholding his poor, mean dwelling and its 
surroundings, and picturing his outward life and earthly 
manifestations from these, one does not so much wonder 
that the people of that day should have failed to recog- 
nize all that was admirable and immortal in a disreputa- 
ble, drunken, shabbily clothed, and shabbily housed man, 
consorting with associates of damag?d character, and, as 
his only ostensible occupation, gauging the whiskey, 
which he too often tasted. Siding with Burns, as we 
needs must, in his plea against the world, let us try to 
do the world a little justice too. It is far easier to know 
and honor a poet when his fame has taken shape in the 
spotlessness of marble than w T hen the actual man comes 
staggering before you, besmeared with the sordid stains 
of his daily life. For my part, I chiefly wonder that his 
recognition dawned so brightly while he was still living. 
There must have been something very grand in his im- 
mediate presence, some strangely impressive characteris- 
tic in his natural behavior, to have caused him to seem 
like a demigod so soon. 

As we went back through the churchyard, we saw a 
spot where nearly four hundred inhabitants of Dumfries 
were buried during the cholera year; and also some curi- 
ous old monuments, with raised letters, the inscriptions 
on which were not sufficiently legible to induce us to 



SOME OE THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 221 

puzzle them out ; but, I believe, they mark the resting- 
places of old Covenanters, some of whom were killed by 
Claverliouse and his fellow-ruffians. 

St. Michael's Church is of red freestone, and was 
built about a hundred years ago, on an old Catholic 
foundation. Our guide admitted us into it, and showed 
us, in the porch, a very pretty little marble figure of a 
child asleep, with a drapery over the lower part, from 
beneath which appeared its two baby feet. It was truly 
a sweet little statue ; and the woman told us that it rep- 
resented a child of the sculptor, and that the baby (here 
still in its marble infancy) had died more than twenty- 
SiX years ago. " Many ladies," she said, " especially 
such as had ever lost a child, had shed tears over it." 
It was very pleasant to think of the sculptor bestowing 
the best of his genius and art to re-create his tender 
child in stone, and to make the representation as soft 
and sweet as the original ; but the conclusion of the 
story has something that jars with our awakened sensi- 
bilities. A gentleman from London had seen the statue, 
and was so much delighted with it that he bought it of 
the father-artist, after it had lain above a quarter of a 
century in the church-porch. So this was not the real, 
tender image that came out of the father's heart ; he had 
sold that truest one for a hundred guineas, and sculptured 
this mere copy to replace it. The first figure was entirely 
naked in its earthly and spiritual innocence. The copy, 
as I have said above, has a drapery over the lower limbs. 
But, after all, if we come to the truth of the matter, the 
sleeping baby may be as fitly reposited in the drawing- 
room of a connoisseur as in a cold and dreary church- 
porch. 

We went into the church, and found it very plain and 
naked, without altar-decorations, and having its floor quite 



2-Z'Z SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

covered with unsightly wooden pews. The woman led us 
to a pew cornering on one of the side-aisles, and, telling 
us that it used to be Burns's family-pew, showed us his 
seat, which is in the corner by the aisle. It is so situated, 
that a sturdy pillar hid him from the pulpit, and from the 
minister's eye ; " for Robin was no great friends with 
the ministers," said she. This touch — his seat behind 
the pillar, and Burns himself nodding in sermon-time, or 
keenly observant of profane things — brought him before 
us to the life. In the corner-seat of the next pew, right 
before Burns, and not more than two feet off, sat the 
young lady on whom the poet saw that unmentionable 
parasite which he has immortalized in song. We were 
ungenerous enough to ash the lady's name, but the good 
woman could not tell it. This was the last thing which 
we saw in Dumfries worthy of record ; and it ought to 
be noted that our guide refused some money which my 
companion offered her, because I had already paid her 
what she deemed sufficient. 

At the railway-station we spent more than a weary 
hour, waiting for the train, which at last came up, and 
took us to Mauchliue. We got into an omnibus, the only 
conveyance to be had, and drove about a mile to the vil- 
lage, where we established ourselves at the Loudoun 
Hotel, one of the veriest country inns which we have 
found in Great Britain. The town of Mauchliue, a place 
more redolent of Burns than almost any other, consists 
of a street or two of contiguous cottages, mostly white- 
washed, and with thatched roofs. It has nothing sylvan 
or rural in the immediate village, and is as ugly a place 
as mortal man could contrive to make, or to render uglier 
through a succession of untidy generations. The fashion 
of paving the village street, and patching one shabby 
house on the gable-end of another, quite shuts out all 



SOME OP THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 223 

verdure and pleasantness ; but, I presume, we are not 
likely to see a mure genuine old Scotch village, such as 
they used to be iiiBurns's time; and long before, than this 
of Mauchline. The church stands about midway up the 
street, and is built of red freestone, very simple in its 
architecture, with a square tower and pinnacles. In this 
sacred edifice, and its churchyard, was the scene of one 
of Burns's most characteristic productions, " The Holy 
Fair." 

Almost directly opposite its gate, across the village 
street, stands Posie Nansie's inn, where the " Jolly Beg- 
gars " congregated. The latter is a two-story, red-stone, 
thatched house, looking old, but by no means venerable, 
like a drunken patriarch. It has small, old-fashioned 
windows, and may well have stood for centuries, — 
though, seventy or eighty years ago, when Burns was 
conversant with it, I should fancy it might have been 
something better than a beggars' alehouse. The whole 
town of Mauchline looks rusty and time-worn, — even 
the newer houses, of which there are several, being shad- 
owed and darkened by the general aspect of the place. 
When we arrived, all the wretched little dwellings seemed 
to have belched forth their inhabitants into the warm 
summer evening ; everybody was chatting with every- 
body, on the most familiar terms ; the bare-legged chil- 
dren gambolled or quarrelled uproariously, and came 
freely, moreover, and looked into the window of our par- 
lor. When we ventured out, we were followed by the 
gaze of the old town : people standing in their doorways, 
old women popping their heads from the chamber-win- 
dows, and stalwart men— idle on Saturday at e'en, after 
their week's hard labor — clustering at the street-corners, 
merely to stare at our unpretending selves. Except in 
some remote little town of Italy (where, besides, the 



224 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

inhabitants had the intelligible stimulus of beggary), I 
have never been honored with nearly such an amount of 
public notice. 

The next forenoon my companion put me to shame by- 
attending church, after vainly exhorting me to do the 
like ; and, it being Sacrament Sunday, and my poor 
friend being wedged into the farther end of a closely 
tilled pew, he was forced to stay through the preaching 
of four several sermons, and came back perfectly ex- 
hausted and desperate. He was somewhat consoled, 
however, on finding that he had witnessed a spectacle of 
Scotch maimers identical with that of Burns's "Holy 
Fair," on the very spot where the poet located that im- 
mortal description. By way of further conformance to 
the customs of the country, we ordered a sheep's head 
and the broth, and did penance accordingly; and at five 
o'clock we took a fly, and set out for Burns's farm of 
Moss Gicl. 

Moss Giel is not more than a mile from Mauchline, 
and the road extends over a high ridge of land, with a 
view of far hills and green slopes on either side. Just 
before we reached the farm, the driver stopped to point 
out a hawthorn, growing by the wayside, which he said 
was Burns's "Lousie Thorn"; and I devoutly plucked 
a branch, although I have really forgotten where or how 
this illustrious shrub has been celebrated. We then 
turned into a rude gateway, and almost immediately 
came to the farm-house of Moss Giel, standing some fifty 
yards removed from the high-road, behind a tall hedge 
of hawthorn, and considerably overshadowed by trees. 
The house is a whitewashed stone cottage, like thousands 
of others in England and Scotland, with a thatched roof, 
on which grass and weeds have intruded a picturesque, 
though alien growth. There is a door and one window 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 225 

iii front, besides another little window that peeps out 
among the thatch. Close by the cottage, and extending 
back at right angles from it, so as to enclose the farm- 
yard, are two other buildings of the same size, shape, and 
general appearance as the house : any one of the three 
looks just as fit for a human habitation as the two others, 
and all three look still more suitable for donkey-stables 
and pigsties. As we drove into the farm -yard, bounded 
on three sides by these three hov r els, a large dog began 
to bark at us ; and some women and children made their 
appearance, but seemed to demur about admitting us, 
because the master and mistress were very religious peo- 
ple, and had not yet come back from the Sacrament at 
Mauchline. 

However, it would not do to be turned back from the 
very threshold of Robert Burns; and as the women 
seemed to be merely straggling visitors, and nobody, at 
all events, had a right to send us away, we went into the 
back door, and, turning to the right, entered a kitchen. 
It showed a deplorable lack of housewifely neatness, and 
in it there were three or four children, one of whom, a 
girl eight or nine years old, held a baby in her arms. She 
proved to be the daughter of the people of the house, and 
gave us what leave she could to look about us. Thence 
we stepped across the narrow mid-passage of the cottage 
into the only other apartment below stairs, a sitting-room, 
where we found a young man eating bread and cheese. 
He informed us that he did not live there, and had only 
called in to refresh himself on his way home from church. 
This room, like the kitchen, was a noticeably poor one, 
and, besides being all that the cottage had to show for a 
parlor, it was a sleeping-apartment, having two beds, 
which might be curtained off, on occasion. The young- 
man allowed us liberty (so far as in him lay) to go up 
10* o 



2:26 SO MP] OF TOE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

stairs. Up we crept, accordingly; and a few steps 
brought us to the top of the staircase, over the kitchen, 
where we found the wretchedest little sleeping-chamber 
in the world, with a sloping roof under the thatch, and 
two beds spread upon the bare floor. This, most prob- 
ably, was Burns's chamber; or, perhaps, it may have 
been that of his mother's servant-maid; and, in either 
case, this rude floor, at one time or another, must have 
creaked beneath the pt>et's midnight tread. On the op- 
posite side of the passage was the door of another attic- 
chamber, opening which, I saw a considerable number of 
cheeses on the floor. 

The whole house was pervaded with a frowzy smell, 
and also a dunghill odor ; and it is not easy to under- 
stand how the atmosphere of such a dwelling can be nay 
more agreeable or salubrious morally than it appeared to 
be physically. No virgin, surely, could keep a holy awe 
about her while stowed higgledy-piggledy with coarse- 
naturcd rustics into this narrowness and filth. Such 
a habitation is calculated to make beasts of men and 
women; and it indicates a degree of barbarism which I 
did not imagine to exist in Scotland, that a tiller of broad 
fields, like the farmer of Mauchlinc, should have his 
abode in a pigsty. It is sad to think of anybody — not 
to say a poet, but any human being — sleeping, eating, 
thinking, praying, and spending all his home-life in this 
miserable hovel ; but, mcthinks, I never in the least knew 
how to estimate the miracle of Burns's genius, nor his 
heroic merit for being no worse man, until I thus learned 
the squalid hindrances amid which he developed himself. 
Space, a free atmosphere, and cleanliness have a vast 
deal to do with the possibilities of human virtue. 

The biographers talk of the farm of Moss Giel as 
being damp and unwholesome ; but I do not see why, 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 227 

outside of the cottage-walls, it should possess so evil a 
reputation. It occupies a high, broad ridge, enjoying, 
surely, whatever benefit can come of a breezy site, and 
sloping far downward before any marshy soil is reached. 
The high hedge, and the trees that stand beside the cot- 
tage, give it a pleasant aspect enough to one who does 
not know the grimy secrets of the interior; and the sum- 
mer afternoon was now so bright that I shall remember 
the scene with a great deal of sunshine over it. 

Leaving the cottage, we drove through a field, which 
the driver told us was that in which Burns turned up the 
mouse's nest. It is the enclosure nearest to the cottage, 
and seems now to be a pasture, and a rather remarka- 
bly unfertile one. A little farther on, the ground was 
whitened with an immense number of daisies, — daisies, 
daisies everywhere; and in answer to my inquiry, the 
driver said that this was the field where Burns ran his 
ploughshare over the daisy. If so, the soil seems to have 
been consecrated to daisies by the song which he bestowed 
on that first immortal one. I alighted, and plucked a 
whole handful of these "wee, modest, crimson-tipped 
flowers/' which will be precious to many friends in our 
own country as coining from Burns's farm, and being of 
the same race and lineage as that daisy which he turned 
into an amaranthine flower while seeming to destroy it. 

Erom Moss Giel we drove through a variety of pleas- 
ant scenes, some of which were familar to us by their 
connection with Burns. We skirted, too, along a portion 
of the estate of Auchinleek, which still belongs to the 
Boswell family,. — the present possessor being Sir James 
Boswell,* a grandson of Johnson's friend, and son of 
the Sir Alexander who was killed in a duel. Our driver 

* Sir James Boswell is now dead. 



228 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

spoke of Sir James as a kind, free-hearted man, but ad- 
dicted to horse-races and similar pastimes, and a little 
too familiar with the wiue-cup ; so that poor Bozzy's 
booziness would appear to have become hereditary in 
his ancient line. There is no male heir to the estate of 
Auchinleck. The portion of the lauds which we saw is 
covered" with wood and much undermined with rabbit- 
warrens ; nor, though the territory extends over a large 
number of acres, is the income very considerable. 

By and by we came to the spot where Burns saw 7 Miss 
Alexander, the Lass of Ballochmyle. It was on a bridge, 
which (or, more probably, a bridge that has succeeded to 
the old one, and is made of iron) crosses from bank to 
bank, high in air, over a deep gorge of the road ; so that 
the young lady may have appeared to Burns like a crea- 
ture between earth and sky, and compounded chiefly of 
celestial elements. But, in honest truth, the great charm 
of a woman, in Burns's eyes, was always her womanhood, 
and not the angelic mixture which other poets find in her. 

Our driver pointed out the course taken by the Lass 
of Ballochmyle, through the shrubbery, to a rock on the 
banks of the Lugar, where it seems to be the tradition 
that Burns accosted her. The song implies no such 
interview. Lovers, of whatever condition, high or low, 
could desire no lovelier scene in which to breathe their 
vows : the river flowing over its pebbly bed, sometimes 
gleaming into the sunshine, sometimes hidden deep in 
verdure, and here and there eddying at the foot of high 
and precipitous cliffs. This beautiful estate of Balloch- 
myle is still held by the family of Alexanders, to whom 
Burns's song has given renown on cheaper terms than 
any other set of people ever attained it. How slight the 
tenure seems ! A young lady happened to walk out, one 
summer afternoon, and crossed the path of a neighboring 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 229 

farmer, who celebrated the little incident in four or five 
warm, rude, — at least, not refined, though rather am- 
bitious, — and somewhat ploughman-like verses. Burns 
has written hundreds of better things ; but henceforth, 
for centuries, that maiden has free admittance into the 
dream-land of Beautiful Women, and she and all her race 
are famous. I should like to know the present head of 
the family, and ascertain what value, if any, the members 
of it put upon the celebrity thus won. 

We passed through Catrine, known hereabouts as 
"the clean village of Scotland." Certainly, as regards 
the point indicated, it has greatly the advantage of 
Mauchline, whither we now returned without seeing 
anything else worth writing about. 

There was a rain-storm during the night, and, in the 
morning, the rusty, old, sloping street of Mauchline was 
glistening with wet, while frequent showers came spat- 
tering down. The intense heat of many days past was 
exchanged for a chilly atmosphere, much more suitable 
to a stranger's idea of what Scotch temperature ought to 
be. We found, after breakfast, that the first train north- 
ward had already gone by, and that we must wait till 
nearly two o'clock for the next. I merely ventured out 
once, during the forenoon, and took a brief walk through 
the village, in which I have left little to describe. Its 
chief business appears to be the manufacture of snuff- 
boxes. There are perhaps five or six shops, or more, 
including those licensed to sell only tea and tobacco; 
the best of them have the characteristics of village 
stores in the United States, dealing in a small way with 
an extensive variety of articles. I peeped into the open 
gateway of the churchyard, and saw that the ground 
was absolutely stuffed with dead people, and the surface 
crowded with gravestones, both perpendicular and hori- 



230 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

zontal. All Burns's old Mauchline acquaintance are 
doubtless there, and the Armours among them, except 
Bonny Jean, who sleeps by her poet's side. The family 
of Armour is now extinct in Mauchline. 

Arriving at the railway -station, we found a tall, elderly, 
comely gentleman walking to and fro and waiting for the 
train. He proved to be a Mr. Alexander, — it may fairly 
be presumed the Alexander of Ballochmyle, a blood rela- 
tion of the lovely lass. Wonderful efficacy of a poet's 
verse, that could shed a glory from Long Ago on this 
old gentleman's white hair ! These Alexanders, by the 
by, are not an old family on the Ballochmyle estate ; the 
father of the lass having made a fortune in trade, and 
established himself as the first landed proprietor of his 
name in these parts. The original family was named 
Whitefoord. 

Our ride to Ayr presented nothing very remarkable ; 
and, indeed, a cloudy and rainy day takes the varnish off 
the scenery and causes a woful diminution in the beauty 
and impressiveness of everything we see. Much of our 
way lay along a flat, sandy level, in a southerly direction. 
We reached Ayr in the midst of hopeless rain, and drove 
to the King's Arms Hotel. In the intervals of showers 
I took peeps at the town, which appeared to have many 
modern or modern-fronted edifices ; although there are 
likewise tall, gray, gabled, and quaint -looking houses in 
the by-streets, here and there, betokening an ancient 
place. The town lies on both sides of the Ayr, which is 
here broad and stately, and bordered with dwellings that 
look from their windows directly down into the passing 
tide. 

I crossed the river by a modern and handsome stone 
bridge, and recrossed it, at no great distance, by a vener- 
able structure of four gray arches, which must have 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 231 

bestridden the stream ever since the early days of Scottish 
history. These are the "Two Briggs of Ayr," whose 
midnight conversation was overheard by Burns, while 
other auditors were aware only of the rush and rumble 
of the wintry stream among the arches. The ancient 
bridge is steep and narrow, and paved like a street, and 
defended by a parapet of red freestone, except at the 
two ends, where some mean old shops allow scanty room 
for the pathway to creep between. Nothing else im- 
pressed me hereabouts, unless I mention, that, during 
the rain, the women and girls went about the streets of 
Ayr barefooted to save their shoes. 

The next morning wore a lowering aspect, as if it felt 
itself destined to be one of many consecutive days of 
storm. After a good Scotch breakfast, however, of fresh 
herrings and eggs, we took a fly, and started at a little 
past ten for the banks of the Doon. On our way, at 
about two miles from Ayr, we drew up at a roadside cot- 
tage, on which was an inscription to the effect that Rob- 
ert Burns was born within its Avails. It is now a public- 
house; and, of course, we alighted and entered its little 
sitting-room, which, as we at present see it, is a neat 
apartment, with the modern improvement of a ceiling. 
The walls are much overscribbled with names of visitors, 
and the wooden door of a cupboard in the wainscot, as 
well as all the other wood-work of the room, is cut and 
carved with initial letters. So, likewise, are two tables, 
which, having received a coat of varnish over the inscrip- 
tions, form really curious and interesting articles of fur- 
niture. I have seldom (though I do not personally 
adopt this mode of illustrating my humble name) felt 
inclined to ridicule the natural impulse of most people 
thus to record themselves at the shrines of poets and 
heroes. 



232 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

On a panel, let into the wall in a corner of the room, 
is a portrait of Burns, copied from the original picture 
by Nasinyth. The Hour of this apartment is of boards, 
which are probably a recent substitute for the ordinary 
flag-stones of a peasant's cottage. There is but one 
other room pertaining to the genuine birthplace of Rob- 
ert Burns: it is the kitchen, into which we now went. 
It has a floor of flag-stones, even ruder than those of 
Shakespeare's house, — though, perhaps, not so strangely 
cracked and broken as the latter, over which the hoof of 
Satan himself might seem to have been trampling. A 
new window has been opened through the wall, towards 
the road ; but on the opposite side is the little original 
window, of only four small panes, through which came 
the first daylight that shone upon the Scottish poet. At 
the side of the room, opposite the ii replace, is a recess, 
containing a bed, which can be hidden by curtains. In 
that humble nook, of all places in the world, Providence 
was pleased to deposit the germ of the richest human 
life which mankind then had within its circumference. 

These two rooms, as I have said, make up the whole 
sum and substance of Burns's birthplace : for there were 
no chambers, nor even attics ; and the thatched roof 
formed the only ceiling of kitchen and sitting-room, the 
height of which was that of the whole house. The cot- 
tage, however, is attached to another edifice of the same 
size and description, as these little habitations often are ; 
and, moreover, a splendid addition has been made to it, 
since the poet's renown began to draw visitors to the 
wayside alehouse. The old woman of the house led us 
through an entry, and showed a vaulted hall, of no vast 
dimensions, to be sure, but marvellously large and splen- 
did as compared with what might be anticipated from the 
outward aspect of the cottage. It contained a bust of 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 233 

Burns, and was Lung round with pictures and engravings, 
principally illustrative of his life and poems. In this 
part of the house, too, there is a parlor, fragrant with 
tobacco-smoke ; and, no doubt, many a noggin of whiskey 
is here quaffed to the memory of the bard, who professed 
to draw so much inspiration from that potent liquor. 

We bought some engravings of Kirk Alio way, the 
Bridge of l)oon, and the monument, and gave the old 
woman a fee besides, and took our leave. A very short 
drive farther brought us within sight of the monument, 
and to the hotel, situated close by the entrance of the 
ornamental grounds within which the former is enclosed. 
We rang the bell at the gate of the enclosure, but were 
forced to wait a considerable time ; because the old man, 
the regular superintendent of the spot, had gone to assist 
at the laving of the corner-stone of a new kirk. He 
appeared anon, and admitted us, but immediately hurried 
away to be present at the concluding ceremonies, leaving 
us locked up with Burns. 

The enclosure around the monument is beautifully laid 
out as an ornamental garden, and abundantly provided 
with rare flowers and shrubbery, all tended with loving 
care. The monument stands on an elevated site, and 
consists of a massive basement-story, three-sided, above 
which rises a light and elegant Grecian temple, — ■ a mere 
dome, supported on Corinthian pillars, and open to all the 
winds. The edifice is beautiful in itself; though I know 
not what peculiar appropriateness it may have, as the 
memorial of a Scottish rural poet. 

The door of the basement -story stood open ; and, en- 
tering, we saw a bust of Burns in a niche,-looking keener, 
more refined, but not so warm and whole-souled as his 
pictures usually do. I think the likeness cannot be good. 
In the centre of the room stood a glass case, in which were 



231 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

repositcd the two volumes of the little Pocket Bible that 
Burns gave to Highland Mary, when they pledged their 
troth to one another. It is poorly printed, on coarse 
paper. A verse of Scripture, referring to the solemnity 
and awfulness of vows, is written within the cover of 
each volume, in the poet's own hand ; and fastened to 
one of the covers is a lock of Highland Mary's golden 
hair. This Bible had been carried to America by one 
of her relatives, but was sent back to be fitly treasured 
here. 

There is a staircase w T ithin the monument, by which 
we ascended to the top, and had a view of bath Briggs 
of Doon ; the scene of Tarn O'Shauter's misadventure 
being close at hand. Descending, we wandered through 
the enclosed garden, and came to a little building in a 
corner, on entering which, we found the two statues of 
Tarn and Sutor Wat, — ponderous stone-work enough, 
yet permeated in a remarkable degree with living warmth 
and jovial hilarity. From this part of the garden, too, 
we again beheld the old Brigg of Doon, over which Tarn 
galloped in such imminent and awful peril. It is a 
beautiful object in the landscape, with one high, graceful 
arch, ivy-grown, and shadowed all over and around with 
foliage. 

When we had waited a good while, the old gardener 
came, telling us that he had heard an excellent prayer 
at laying the corner-stone of the new kirk. He now 
gave us some roses and swectbrior, and let us out from 
his pleasant garden. We immediately hastened to Kirk 
Alloway, which is within two or three minutes' walk of 
the monument. A few steps aseend from the roadside, 
through a gate, into the old graveyard, in the midst of 
which stands the kirk. The edifice is wholly roofless, 
but the side-wails and gable-ends are quite entire, though 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 235 

portions of them are evidently modern restorations. 
Never was there a plainer little church, or one with 
smaller architectural pretension ; no New England meet- 
ing-house has more simplicity in its very self, though 
poetry and fun have clambered and clustered so wildly 
over Kirk Alloway that it is difficult to see it as it actu- 
ally exists. By the by, I do not understand why Satan 
and an assembly of witches should hold their revels 
within a consecrated precinct; but the weird scene has 
so established itself in the world's imaginative faith that 
it must be accepted as an authentic incident, in spite of 
rule and reason to the contrary. Possibly, some carnal 
minister, some priest of pious aspect and hidden infidel- 
ity, had dispelled the consecration of the holy edifice by 
his pretence of prayer, and thus made it the resort of 
unhappy ghosts and sorcerers and devils. 

The interior of the kirk, even now, is applied to quite 
as impertinent a purpose as when Satan and the witches 
used it as a dancing-hall ; for it is divided in the midst 
by a wall of stone-masonry, and each compartment has 
been converted into a family burial-place. The name on 
one of the monuments is Crawfurd ; the other bore no 
inscription. It is impossible not to feel that these good 
people, whoever they may be, had no business to thrust 
their prosaic bones into a spot that belongs to the world, 
and where their presence jars with the emotions, be they 
sad or gay, which the pilgrim brings thither. They shut 
us out from our own precincts, too, — from that inalien- 
able possession which Burns bestowed in free gift upon 
mankind, by taking it from the actual earth and annexing 
it to the domain of imagination. And here these wretched 
squatters have lain down to their long sleep, after barring 
each of the two doorways of the kirk with an iron grate ! 
May their rest be troubled, till they rise and let us in ! 



236 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

Kirk Alloway is inconceivably small, considering how 
large a space it fills in our imagination before we see it. 
I paced its length, outside of the wall, and found it only 
seventeen of my paces, and not more than ten of them 
in breadth. There seem to have been but very few 
windows, all of which, if I rightly remember, are now 
blocked up with mason-work of stone. One mullioned 
window, tall and narrow, in the eastern gable, might 
have been seen by Tarn O'Shanter, blazing with devilish 
light, as he approached along the road from Ayr ; and 
there is a small and square one, on the side nearest the 
road, into which he might have peered, as he sat on 
horseback. Indeed, I could easily have looked through 
it, standing on the ground, had not the opening been 
walled up. There is an odd kind of belfry at the peak 
of one of the gables, with the small bell still hanging in 
it. And this is all that I remember of Kirk Alloway, 
except that the stones of its material are gray and 
irregular. 

The road from Ayr passes Alloway Kirk, and crosses 
the Doon by a modern bridge, without swerving much 
from a straight line. To reach the old bridge, it appears 
to have made a bend, shortly after passing the kirk, and 
then to have turned sharply towards the river. The new 
bridge is within a minute's walk of the monument ; and 
we went thither, and leaned over its parapet to admire 
the beautiful Doon, flowing wildly and sweetly between 
its deep and wooded banks. I never saw a lovelier 
scene ; although this might have been even lovelier, if a 
kindly sun had shone upon it. The ivy-grown, ancient 
bridge, with its high arch, through which we had a pic- 
ture of the river and the green banks beyond, was abso- 
lutely the most picturesque object, in a quiet and gentle 
way, that ever blessed my eyes. Bonny Doon, with its 



S01IE OF THE HAUNTS OF BUHNS. 237 

wooded banks, and the boughs dipping into the water ! 
The memory of them, at this moment, affects me like the 
song of birds, and Burns crooning some verses, simple 
and wild, in accordance with their native melody. 

It was impossible to depart without crossing the very 
bridge of Tarn's adventure; so we went thither, over a 
now disused portion of the road, and, standing on the 
centre of the arch, gathered some ivy-leaves from that 
sacred spot. This done, we returned as speedily as might 
be to Ayr, whence, taking the rail, we soon beheld Ailsa 
Craig rising like a pyramid out of the sea. Drawing- 
nearer to Glasgow, Ben Lomond hove in sight, with a 
dome-like summit, supported by a shoulder on each side. 
But a man is better than a mountain; and we had been 
holding intercourse, if not with the reality, at least with 
the stalwart ghost of one of Earth's memorable sons, amid 
the scenes where he lived and sung. We shall appreciate 
him better as a poet, hereafter; for there is no writer 
whose life, as a man, has so much to do with his fame, 
and throws such a necessary light upon whatever he has 
produced. Henceforth, there will be a personal warmth 
for us in everything that he wrote ; and, like his coun- 
trymen, we shall know him in a kind of personal way, as 
if we had shaken hands with him, and felt the thrill of 
his actual voice. 




A LONDON SUBURB. 




XE of our English summers looks, in the ret- 
rospect, as if it had born patched with more 
frequent sunshine than the sky of England ordi- 
narily affords ; but I believe that it may be only a moral 
effect, — a "light that never was .on sea nor land," — 
caused by our having found a particularly delightful 
abode in the neighborhood of London. In order to en- 
joy it, however, I was compelled to solve the problem of 
living in two places at once, — an impossibility which I 
so far accomplished as to vanish, at frequent intervals, 
out of men's sight and knowledge on one side of Eng- 
land, and take my place in a circle of familiar faces on 
the other, so quietly that I seemed to have been there 
all along. It was the easier to get accustomed to our 
new residence, because it was not only rich in all the 
material properties of a homo, but had also the home-like 
atmosphere, the household element, which is of too in- 
tangible a character to be let even with the most, thor- 
oughly furnished lodging-house. A friend had given us 
his suburban residence, with all its conveniences, ele- 
gances, and snuggeries, — its drawing-rooms and library, 
still warm and bright with the recollection of the genial 
presences that we had known there, — its closets, cham- 
bers, kitchen, and even its wine-cellar, if we could have 



A LONDON SUBURB. 239 

availed ourselves of so dear and delicate a trust, — its 
lawn and cosey garden-nooks, and whatever else makes 
up the multitudinous idea of an English home, — he had 
transferred it all to us, pilgrims and dusty wayfarers, that 
we might rest and take our ease during his summer's ab- 
sence on the Continent. We had long been dwelling in 
tents, as it were,. and morally shivering by hearths which, 
heap the bituminous coal upon them as we might, no 
blaze could render cheerful. I remember, 10 this (lav, 
the dreary feeling with which I sat by our first English 
fireside, and watched the chill and rainy twilight of an 
autumn day darkening down upon the garden ; while the 
portrait of the preceding occupant of the house (evidently 
a most unamiable personage in his lifetime) scowled in- 
hospitably from above the mantel-piece, as if indignant 
that an American should try to make himself at home 
there. Possibly it may appease his sulky shade to know 
that I quitted his abode as much a stranger as I entered 
it. But now, at last, we were in a genuine British home, 
where refined and warm-hearted people had just been 
living their daily life, and had left us a summer's inheri- 
tance of slowly ripened days, such as a stranger's hasty 
opportunities so seldom permit him to enjoy. 

Within so trifling a distance of the central spot of all 
the world (which, as Americans have at present no cen- 
tre of their own, we may allow to be somewhere in the 
vicinity, we will say, of St. Paul's Cathedral), it might 
have seemed natural that I should be tossed about by the 
turbulence of the vast London whirlpool. But I had 
drifted into a still eddy, where conflicting movements 
made a repose, and, wearied with a good deal of uncon- 
genial activity, I found the quiet of my temporary haven 
more attractive than anything that the great town could 
offer. I already knew London well ; that is to say, I 



240 A LONDON SUBURB. 

had long ago satisfied (so far as it was capable of satis- 
faction) that mysterious yearning — the magnetism of 
millions of hearts operating upon one — winch impels 
every man's individuality to mingle itself with the im- 
mensest mass of human life within his scope. Day after 
day, at an earlier period, I had trodden the thronged 
thoroughfares, the broad, lonely squares, the lanes, alleys, 
and strange labyrinthine courts, the parks, the gardens 
and enclosures of ancient studious societies, so retired and 
silent amid the city uproar, the markets, the foggy streets 
along the river-side, the bridges, — I had sought all parts 
of the metropolis, in short, with an unweariable and in- 
discriminating curiosity ; until few of the native inhab- 
itants, I fancy, bad turned so many of its corners as 
myself. These aimless wanderings (in which my prime 
purpose and achievement were to lose my way, and so to 
find it the more surely) had brought me, at one time or 
another, to the sight and actual presence of almost all the 
objects and renowned localities that I had read about, 
and which had made London the dream-city of my youth. 
I had found it better than my dream ; for there is noth- 
ing else in life comparable (in that species of enjoyment, 
I mean) to the thick, heavy, oppressive, sombre delight 
which an American is sensible of, hardly knowing whether 
to call it a pleasure or a pain, in the atmosphere of Lon- 
don. The result was, that I acquired a home-feeling 
there, as nowhere else in the world, — though afterwards 
I came to have a somewhat similar sentiment in regard 
to Home ; and as long as either of those two great cities 
shall exist, the cities of the Past and of the Present, a 
man's native soil may crumble beneath his feet without 
leaving him altogether homeless upon earth. 

Thus, having once fully yielded to its influence, I was 
in a manner free of the city, and could approach or keep 



A LONDON SUBURB. 241 

away from it as I pleased. Hence it happened, that, 
living within a quarter of an hour's rush of the London 
Bridge Terminus, I was oi'tener tempted to spend a 
whole summer-clay in our garden than to seek anything 
new or old, wonderful or commonplace, beyond its pre- 
cincts. It was a delightful garden, of no great extent, 
but comprising a good many facilities for repose and en- 
joyment, such as arbors and garden-seats, shrubbery, 
flower-beds, rose-bushes in a profusion of bloom, pinks, 
poppies, geraniums, sweet-peas, and a variety of other 
scarlet, yellow, blue, and purple blossoms, which I did 
not trouble myself to recognize individually, yet had al- 
ways a vague sense of their beauty about me. The dim 
sky of England has a most happy etl'ect on the coloring 
of flowers, blending richness with delicacy in the same 
texture ; but in this garden, as everywhere else, the ex- 
uberance of English verdure had a greater charm than 
any tropical splendor or diversity of hue. The hunger 
for natural beauty might be satisfied with grass and green 
leaves forever. Conscious of the triumph of England in 
this respect, and loyally anxious for the credit of my own 
country, it gratified me to observe what trouble and pains 
the English gardeners are fain to throw away in pro- 
ducing a few sour plums and abortive pears and apples, — 
as, for example, in this very garden, where a row of un- 
happy trees were spread out perfectly flat against a brick 
wall, looking as if impaled alive, or crucified, with a cruel 
and unattainable purpose of compelling them to produce 
rich fruit by torture. For my part, I never ate an Eng- 
lish fruit, raised in the open air, that could compare in 
flavor with a Yankee turnip. 

The garden included that prime feature of English do- 
mestic scenery, a lawn. It had been levelled, carefully 
shorn, and converted into a bowling-green, on which we 
11 p 



242 A LONDON SUBURB. 

sometimes essayed to practise the time-lionored game of 
bowls, most unskilfully, yet not without a perception that 
it involves a very pleasant mixture of exercise and ease, 
as is the case with most of the old English pastimes. 
Our little domain was shut in by the house on one side, 
and in other directions by a hedge-fence and a brick wall, 
which last was concealed or softened by shrubbery and 
the impaled fruit-trees already mentioned. Over all the 
outer region, beyond our immediate precincts, there was 
an abundance of foliage, tossed aloft from the near or 
distant trees with which that agreeable suburb is adorned. 
The effect was wonderfully sylvan and rural, insomuch 
that we might have fancied ourselves in the depths of a 
wooded seclusion ; only that, at brief intervals, we could 
hear the galloping sweep of a railway-train passing within 
a quarter of a mile, and its discordant screech, moder- 
ated by a little farther distance, as it reached the Black- 
heath Station. That harsh, rough sound, seeking me out 
so inevitably, was the voice of the great world summon- 
ing me forth. I know not whsther I was the more pained 
or pleased to be thus constantly put in mind of the neigh- 
borhood of London ; for, on the one hand, my conscience 
stung me a little for reading a book, or playing with chil- 
dren in the grass, when there were so many better things 
for an enlightened traveller to do, — while, at the same 
time, it gave a deeper delight to my luxurious idleness, 
to contrast it with the turmoil which I escaped. On the 
whole, however, I do not repent of a single wasted hour, 
and only wish that I could have spent twice as many in 
the same way ; for the impression on my memory is, that 
I was as happy in that hospitable garden as the English 
summer-day was long. 

One chief condition of my enjoyment was the weather. 
Italv has nothing like it, nor America. There never was 



A LONDON SUBURB. 243 

such weather except in England, where, in requital of a 
vast amount of horrible east-wind between February and 
June, and a brown October and black November, and a 
wet, chill, sunless winter, there are a few weeks of in- 
comparable summer, scattered through July and August, 
and the earlier portion of September, small in quantity, 
but exquisite enough to atone for the whole year's atmos- 
pherical delinquencies. After all, the prevalent sombre- 
ness may have brought out those sunny intervals in such 
high relief, that I see them, in my recollection, brighter 
than they really were : a little light makes a glory for 
people who live habitually in a gray gloom. The Eng- 
lish, however, do not seem to know how enjoyable the 
momentary gleams of their summer are ; they call it 
broiling weather, and hurry to the seaside with red, per- 
spiring faces, in a state of combustion and deliquescence ; 
and I have observed that even their cattle have similar sus- 
ceptibilities, seeking the deepest shade, or standing mid- 
leg deep in pools and streams to cool themselves, at 
temperatures which our own cows would deem little more 
than barely comfortable. To myself, after the summer 
heats of my native land had somewhat effervesced out of 
my blood and memory, it was the weather of Paradise 
itself. It might be a little too warm ; but it was that 
modest and inestimable superabundance which constitutes 
a bounty of Providence, instead of just a niggardly 
enough. During my first year in England, residing in 
perhaps the most ungenial part of the kingdom, I could 
never be quite comfortable without a fire on the hearth ; 
in the second twelvemonth, beginning to get acclimatized, 
I became sensible of an austere friendliness, shy, but some- 
times almost tender, in the veiled, shadowy, seldom smil- 
ing summer; and in the succeeding years, — whether 
that I had renewed my fibre with English beef and re- 



2M A LONDON SUBUEB. 

pleiiished my blood with English ale, or whatever were 
the cause, — I grew content with winter and especially in 
love with summer, desiring little more for happiness than 
merely to breathe and bask. At the midsummer which 
we are now speaking of, I must needs confess that the 
noontide sun came down more fervently than I found al- 
together tolerable ; so that I was fain to shift my position 
with the shadow of the shrubbery, making myself the 
movable index of a sundial that reckoned up the hours 
of an almost interminable day. 

Eor each day seemed endless, though never wearisome. 
As far as your actual experience is concerned, the Eng- 
lish summer-day has positively no beginning and no end. 
When you awake, at any reasonable hour, the sun is 
already shining through the curtains ; you live through 
unnumbered hours of Sabbath quietude, with a calm 
variety of incident softly etched upon their tranquil 
lapse ; and at length you become conscious that it is 
bedtime again, while there is still enough daylight in 
the sky to make the pages of your book distinctly legible. 
Night, if there be any such season, hangs down a trans- 
parent veil through which the bygone day beholds its 
successor ; or, if not quite true of the latitude of London, 
it may be soberly affirmed of the more northern parts of 
the island, that To-morrow is born before its Yesterday is 
dead. They exist together in the golden twilight, where 
the decrepit old day dimly discerns the face of the omi- 
nous infant ; and you, though a mere mortal, may simul- 
taneously touch them both with one finger of recollection 
and another of prophecy. I cared not how long the day 
might be, nor how many of them. I had earned this 
repose by a long course of irksome toil and perturba- 
tion, and could have been content never to stray out of 
the limits of that suburban villa and its garden. U I 



/ A LONDON SUBURB. 245 

lacked anything beyond, it would have satisfied me well 
enough to dream about it, instead of struggling for its 
actual possession. At least, this was the feeling of the 
moment ; although the transitory, flitting, and irrespon- 
sible character of my life there was perhaps the most 
enjoyable element of all, as allowing me much of the 
comfort of house and home without any sense of their 
weight upon my back. The nomadic life has great ad- 
vantages, if we can find tents ready pitched for us at 
every stage. 

So much for the interior of our abode, — a spot of 
deepest quiet, within reach of the intensest activity. 
But, even when we stepped beyond our own gate, we 
were not shocked with any immediate presence of the 
great world. We were dwelling in one of those oases 
that have grown up (in comparatively recent years, I be- 
lieve) on the wide waste of Blackheath, which otherwise 
offers a vast extent of unoccupied ground in singular 
proximity to the metropolis. As a general thing, the 
proprietorship of the soil seems to exist in everybody 
and nobocj^ ; but exclusive rights have been obtained, 
here and there, chiefly by men whose daily concerns link 
them with London, so that you find their villas or boxes 
standing along village streets which have often more of 
an American aspect than the elder English settlements. 
The scene is semi-rural. Ornamental trees overshadow 
the sidewalks, and grassy margins border the wheel- 
tracks. The houses, to be sure, have certain points of 
difference from those of an American village, bearing 
tokens of architectural design, though seldom of individ- 
ual taste ; and, as far as possible, they stand aloof from 
the street, and separated each from its neighbor by hedge 
or fence, in accordance with the careful exclusiveness of 
the English character, which impels the occupant, more- 



246 A LONDON SUBURB. 

over, to cover the front of his dwelling with as much con- 
cealment of shrubbery as his limits will allow. Through 
the interstices, you catch glimpses of well-kept lawns, 
generally ornamented with flowers, and with what the 
English call rock-work, being heaps of ivy-grown stones 
and fossils, designed for romantic effect in a small way. 
Two or three of such village streets as are here described 
take a collective name, — as, for instance, Blackheath 
Park, — and constitute a kind of community of resi- 
dents, with gateways, kept by a policeman, and a semi- 
privacy, stepping beyond which, you find yourself on the 
breezy heath. 

On this great, bare, dreary common I often went astray, 
as I afterwards did on the Campagna of Rome, and drew 
the air (tainted with London smoke though it might be) 
into my lungs by deep inspirations, with a strange and 
unexpected sense of desert freedom. The misty atmos- 
phere helps you to fancy a remoteness that perhaps does 
not quite exist. During the little time that it lasts, the 
solitude is as impressive as that of a Western prairie or 
forest ; but soon the railway shriek, a mile or two away, 
insists upon informing you of your whereabout ; or you 
recognize in the distance some landmark that you may 
have known, — an insulated villa, perhaps, with its gar- 
den-wall around it, or the rudimental street of a new 
settlement which is sprouting on this otherwise barren 
soil. Half a century ago, the most frequent token of 
man's beneficent contiguity might have been a gibbet, 
and the creak, like a tavern sign, of a murderer swinging 
to and fro in irons. Blackheath, with its highwaymen 
and footpads, was dangerous in those days; and even 
now, for aught I know, the Western prairie may still 
compare favorably with it as a safe region to go astray in. 
When I was acquainted with Blackheath, the ingenious 



A LONDON SUBUltB. 247 

device of garroting had recently come into fashion ; and 
I can remember, while crossing those waste places at 
midnight, and hearing footsteps behind me, to have been 
sensibly encouraged by also hearing, not far off, the 
clinking hoof-tramp of one of the horse-patrols who do 
regular duty there. About sunset, or a little later, was 
the time when the broad and somewhat desolate peculi- 
arity of the heath seemed to me to put on its utmost im- 
pressiveness. At that hour, finding myself on elevated 
ground, I once had a view of immense London, four or 
five miles off, with the vast Dome in the midst, and the 
towers of the two Houses of Parliament rising up into 
the smoky canopy, the thinner substance of which ob- 
scured a mass of things, and hovered about the objects 
that were most distinctly visible, — a glorious and som- 
bre picture, dusky, awful, but irresistibly attractive, like 
a young man's dream of the great world, foretelling at 
that distance a grandeur never to be fully realized. 

While I lived in that neighborhood, the tents of two or 
three sets of cricket-players were constantly pitched on 
Blackheath, and matches were going forward that seemed 
to involve the honor and credit of communities or coun- 
ties, exciting an interest in everybody but myself, who 
cared not what part of England might glorify itself at 
the expense of another. It is necessary to be born an 
Englishman, I believe, in order to enjoy this great na- 
tional game; at any rate, as a spectacle for an outside 
observer, I found it lazy, lingering, tedious, and utterly 
devoid of pictorial effects. Choice of other amusements 
was at hand. Butts for archery were established, and 
bows and arrows were to be let, at so many shots for a 
penny, — there being abundance of space for a farther 
flight-shot than any modern archer can lend to his shaft. 
Then there was an absurd game of throwing a stick at 



248 A LONDON SUBURB. 

crockery-ware, which I have witnessed a hundred times, 
and personally engaged in once or twice, without ever 
having- the satisfaction to see a bit of broken crockery. 
In other spots you found donkeys for children to ride, and 
ponies of a very meek and patient spirit, on which the 
Cockney pleasure-seekers of both sexes rode races and 
made wonderful displays of horsemanship. By way of 
refreshment there was gingerbread (but, as a true patriot, 
I must pronounce it greatly inferior to our native dainty), 
and ginger-beer, and probably stancher liquor among the 
booth-keeper's hidden stores. The frequent railway-t rains, 
as well as the numerous steamers to Greenwich, have 
made the vacant portions of Blackheath a play-ground 
and breathing-place for the Londoners, readily and very 
cheaply accessible ; so that, in view of this broader use 
and enjoyment, I a little grudged the tracts that have 
been filched away, so to speak, and individualized by 
thriving citizens. One sort of visitors especially interested 
me : they were schools of little boys or girls, under the 
guardianship of their instructors, — charity schools, as I 
often surmised from their aspect, collected among dark 
alleys and squalid courts ; and hither they were brought 
to spend a summer afternoon, these pale little progeny of 
the sunless nooks of London, who had never known that 
the sky was any broader than that narrow and vapory 
strip above their native lane. I fancied that they took 
but a doubtful pleasure, being half affrighted at the wide, 
empty space overhead and round about them, finding the 
air too little medicated with smoke, soot, and graveyard 
exhalations, to be breathed with comfort, and feeling shel- 
terless and lost because grimy London, their slatternly 
and disreputable mother, had suffered them to stray out 
of her arms. 

Passing among these holiday people, we come to one 



A LONDON SUBURB. 249 

of the gateways of Greenwich Park, opening- through an 
old brick wall. It admits us from the bare heath into a 
scene of antique cultivation and woodland ornament, 
traversed in all directions by avenues of trees, many of 
which bear tokens of a venerable age. These broad and 
well-kept pathways rise and decline over the elevations 
and along the bases of gentle hills which diversify the 
whole surface of the Park. The loftiest and most abrupt 
of them (though but of very moderate height) is one of 
the earth's noted summits, and may hold up its head 
with Mont Blanc and Chimborazo, as being the site of 
Greenwich Observatory, where, if all nations will consent 
to say so, the longitude of our great globe begins. I 
used to regulate my wateh by the broad dial-plate against 
the Observatory wall, and felt it pleasant to be standing 
at the very centre of Time and Space. 

There are lovelier parks than this in the neighborhood 
of London, richer scenes of greensward and cultivated 
trees; and Kensington, especially, in a summer after- 
noon, has seemed to me as delightful as any place can or 
ought to be, in a world which, some time or other, we 
must quit. But Greenwich, too, is beautiful, — a spot 
where the art of man has conspired with Nature, as if he 
and the great mother had taken counsel together how to 
make a pleasant scene, and the longest liver of the two 
had faithfully carried out their mutual design. It has, 
likewise, an additional charm of its own, because, to all 
appearance, it is the people's property and play-ground 
in a much more genuine way than the aristocratic resorts 
in closer vicinity to the metropolis. It affords one of the 
instances in which the monarch's property is actually the 
people's, and show r s how much more natural is their 
relation to the sovereign than to the nobility, wmich pre- 
tends to hold the intervening space between the two : for 
11* 



250 A LONDON SUBURB. 

a nobleman makes a paradise only for himself, and fills it 
with his own pomp and pride ; whereas the people are 
sooner or later the legitimate inheritors of whatever 
beauty kings and queens create, as now of Greenwich 
Park. On Sundays, when the sun shone, and even on 
those grim and sombre days when, if it do not actually 
rain, the English persist in calling it fiue weather, it was 
too good to see how sturdily the plebeians trod under their 
own oaks, and what fulness of simple enjoyment they 
evidently found there. They were the people, — not the 
populace, — specimens of a class whose Sunday clothes 
are a distinct kind of garb from their week-day ones ; 
and this, in England, implies wholesome habits of life, 
daily thrift, and a rank above the lowest. I longed to be 
acquainted with them, in order to investigate what man- 
ner of folks they were, what sort of households they kept, 
their politics, their religion, their tastes, and whether they 
were as narrow-minded as their betters. There can be 
very little doubt of it : an Englishman is English, in 
whatever rank of life, though no more intensely so, I 
should imagine, as an artisan or petty shopkeeper, than 
as a member of Parliament. 

The English character, as I conceive it, is by no means 
a very lofty one; they seem to have a great deal of earth 
and grimy dust clinging about them, as was probably 
the case with the stalwart and quarrelsome people who 
sprouted up out of the soil, after Cadmus had sown the 
dragon's teeth. And yet, though the individual Eng- 
lishman is sometimes preternaturally disagreeable, an ob- 
server standing aloof has a sense of natural kindness 
towards them in the lump. They adhere closer to the 
original simplicity in which mankind was created than 
we ourselves do ; they love, quarrel, laugh, cry, and turn 
their actual selves inside out, with greater freedom than 



A LONDON SUBURB. _ 251 

any class of Americans would consider decorous. It was 
often so with these holiday folks in Greenwich Park ; 
and, ridiculous as it may sound, I fancy myself to have 
caught very satisfactory glimpses of Arcadian life among 
the Cockneys there, hardly beyond the scope of Bow- 
Bells, picnicking in the grass, uncouthly gambolling on 
the broad slopes, or straying in motley groups or by sin- 
gle pairs of love-making youths and maidens, along the 
sun-streaked avenues. Even the omnipresent policemen 
or park-keepers could not disturb the beatific impression 
on my mind. One feature, at all events, of the Golden 
Age was to be seen in the herds of deer that encountered 
you in the somewhat remoter recesses of the Park, and 
were readily prevailed upon to nibble a bit of bread out 
of your hand. But, though no wrong had ever been 
done them, and no horn had sounded nor hound bayed at 
the heels of themselves or their antlered progenitors for 
centuries past, there was still an apprehensiveness linger- 
ing in their hearts; so that a slight movement of the 
hand or a step too near would send a whole squadron 
of them scampering away, just as a breath scatters the 
winged seeds of a dandelion. 

The aspect of Greenwich Park, with all those fes- 
tal people wandering through it, resembled that of the 
Borghese Gardens under the walls of Rome, on a Sunday 
or Saint's day; but, I am not ashamed to say, it a little 
disturbed whatever grim ghost of Puritanic strictness 
might be lingering in the sombre depths of a New Eng- 
land heart, among severe and sunless remembrances of 
the Sabbaths of childhood, and pangs of remorse for ill- 
gotten lessons in the catechism, and for erratic fantasies 
or hardly suppressed laughter in the middle of long ser- 
mons. Occasionally, I tried to take the long-hoarded 
sting out of these compunctious smarts by attending 



252 A LONDON SUBURB. 

divine service in the open air. On a cart outside of the 
Park-wall (and, if I mistake not, at two or three corners 
and secluded spots within the Park itself) a Methodist 
preacher uplifts his voice and speedily gathers a congre- 
gation, his zeal for whose religious welfare impels the 
good man to such earnest vociferation and toilsome ges- 
ture that his perspiring face is quickly in a stew. His 
inward flame conspires with the too fervid sun and makes 
a positive martyr of him, even in the very exercise of his 
pious labor; insomuch that he purchases every atom of 
spiritual increment to his hearers by loss of his own cor- 
poreal solidity, and, should his discourse last long enough, 
must finally exhale before their eyes. If I smile at him, 
be it understood, it is not in scorn ; he performs his sacred 
office more acceptably than many a prelate. These way- 
side services attract numbers who would not ^otherwise 
listen to prayer, sermon, or hymn, from one year's end to 
another, and who, for that very reason, are the auditors 
most likely to be moved by the preachers eloquence. 
Yonder Greenwich pensioner, too, — in his costume of 
three-cornered hat, and old-fashioned, brass-buttoned blue 
coat with ample skirts, which makes him look like a con- 
temporary of Admiral Benbow, — that tough old mariner 
may hear a word or two which will go nearer his heart 
than anything that the chaplain of the Hospital can be 
expected to deliver. I always noticed, moreover, that a 
considerable proportion of the audience were soldiers, 
who came hither with a day's leave from Woolwich, — 
hardy veterans in aspect, some of whom wore as many 
as four or five medals, Crimean or East Indian, on the 
breasts of their scarlet coats. The miscellaneous congre- 
gation listen with every appearance of heartfelt interest ; 
and, for my own part, I must frankly acknowledge that I 
never found it possible to give five minutes' attention to 



A LONDON SUBURB. 253 

any other English preaching : so cold and commonplace 
are the homilies that pass for such, under the aged roofs 
of churches. And as for cathedrals, the sermon is an ex- 
ceedingly diminutive and unimportant part of the religious 
services, — if, indeed, it be considered a part, — among the 
pompous ceremonies, the intonations, and the resounding 
and lofty-voiced strains of the choristers. The magnifi- 
cence of the setting quite dazzles out what we Puritans 
look upon as the jewel of the whole affair ; for I presume 
that it was our forefathers, the Dissenters in England and 
America, who gave the sermon its present prominence in 
the Sabbath exercises. 

The Methodists are probably the first and only English- 
men who have worshipped in the open air since the 
ancient Britons listened to the preaching of the Druids; 
and it reminded me of that old priesthood, to see certain 
memorials of their dusky epoch — not religious, however, 
but warlike — in the neighborhood of the spot where the 
Methodist was holding forth. These were some ancient 
barrows, beneath or within which are supposed to lie 
buried the slain of a forgotten or doubtfully remembered 
battle, foiight on the site of Greenwich Park as long ago 
as two or three centuries after the birth of Christ. What- 
ever may once have been their height and magnitude, 
they have now scarcely more prominence in the actual 
scene than the battle of which they are the sole monu- 
ments retains in history, — being only a few mounds side 
by side, elevated a little above the surface of the ground, 
ten or twelve feet in diameter, with a shallow depression 
in their summits. When one of them was opened, not 
long since, no bones, nor armor, nor weapons were dis- 
covered, nothing but some small jewels, and a tuft of hair, 
— perhaps from the head of a valiant general, who, dying 
on the field of his victory, bequeathed this lock, together 



254 A LONDON SUBURB. 

with his indestructible fame, to after ages. The hair and 
jewels are probably in the British Museum, where the 
potsherds and rubbish of innumerable generations make 
the visitor wish that each passing century could carry off 
all its fragments and relics along with it, instead of add- 
ing them to the continually accumulating burden which 
human knowledge is compelled to lug upon its back. As 
for the fame, I know not what has become of it. 

After traversing the Park, we come into the neighbor- 
hood of Greenwich Hospital, and will pass through one 
of its spacious gateways for the sake of glancing at an 
establishment which does more honor to the heart of Eng- 
land than anything else that I am acquainted with, of a 
public nature. It is very seldom that we can be sensible 
of anything like kindliness in the acts or relations of such 
an artificial thing as a National Government. Our own 
government, I should conceive, is too much an abstrac- 
tion ever to feel any sympathy for its maimed sailors and 
soldiers, though it will doubtless do them a severe kind 
of justice, as chilling as the touch of steel. But it seemed 
to me that the Greenwich pensioners are the petted chil- 
dren of the nation, and that the government is their dry- 
nurse, and that the old men themselves have a childlike 
consciousness of their position. Very likely, a better sort 
of life might have been arranged, and a wiser care be- 
stowed on them ; but, such as it is, it enables them to 
spend a sluggish, careless, comfortable old age, grum- 
bling, growling, gruff, as if all the foul weather of their 
past years were pent up within them, yet not much more 
discontented than such weather-beaten and battle-battered 
fragments of human kind must inevitably be. Their home, 
in its outward form, is on a very magnificent plan. Its 
germ was a royal palace, the full expansion of which has 
resulted in a series of edifices externallv more beautiful 



A LONDON SUBURB. 255 

than any English palace that I have seen, consisting of 
several quadrangles of stately architecture, united by col- 
onnades and gravel- walks, and enclosing grassy squares, 
with statues in the centre, the whole extending along the 
Thames. It is built of marble, or very light-colored 
stone, in the classic style, with pillars and porticos, which 
(to my own taste, and, I fancy, to that of the old sailors) 
produce but a cold and shivery elFect in the English cli- 
mate. Had I been the architect, I would have studied 
the characters, habits, and predilections of nautical peo- 
ple in Wapping, Hotherhithe, and the neighborhood of 
the Tower (places which I visited in affectionate remem- 
brance of Captain Lemuel Gulliver, and other actual or 
mythological navigators), and would have built the hos- 
pital in a kind of ethereal similitude to the narrow, dark, 
ugly, and inconvenient, but snug and cosey homeliness of 
the sailor boarding-houses there. There can be no ques- 
tion that all the above attributes, or enough of them to 
satisfy an old sailor's heart, might be reconciled with 
architectural beauty and the wholesome contrivances of 
modern dwellings, and thus a novel and genuine style 
of building be given to the world. 

But their countrymen meant kindly by the old fellows 
in assigning them the ancient royal site where Elizabeth 
held her court and Charles II. began to build his palace. 
So far as the locality went, it was treating them like so 
many kings; and, with a discreet abundance of grog, 
beer, and tobacco, there was perhaps little more to be 
accomplished in behalf of men whose whole previous lives 
have tended to unfit them for old age. Their chief dis- 
comfort is probably for lack of something to do or think 
about. But, judging by the few whom I saw, a listless 
habit seems to have crept over them, a dim dreaminess 
of mood, in which they sit between asleep and awake, 



'lob A LONDON SUBURB. 

and find the long day wearing towards bedtime without 
its having made any distinct record of itself upon their 
consciousness. Sitting on stone benches in the sunshine, 
they subside into ' slumber, or nearly so, and start at 
the approach of footsteps echoing under the colonnades, 
ashamed to be caught napping, and rousing themselves 
in a hurry, as formerly on the midnight watch at sea. In 
their brightest moments, they gather in groups and bore 
one another with endless sea-yarns about their voyages 
under famous admirals, and about gale and calm, battle 
and chase, and all that class of incident that has its sphere 
on the deck and in the hollow interior of a ship, where 
their world has exclusively been. For other pastime, 
they quarrel among themselves, comrade with comrade, 
aud perhaps shake paralytic fists in furrowed faces. If 
inclined for a little exercise, they can bestir their wooden 
legs on the long esplanade that borders by the Thames, 
criticising the rig of passing ships, and firing off volleys 
of malediction at the steamers, which have made the sea 
another element than that they used to be acquainted 
with. All this is but cold comfort for the evening of life, 
yet may compare rather favorably with the preceding por- 
tions of it, comprising little save imprisonment on ship- 
board, in the course of which they have been tossed all 
about the world and caught hardly a glimpse of it, for- 
getting what grass and trees are, and never finding out 
what woman is, though they may have encountered a 
painted spectre which they took for her. A country 
owes much to human beings whose bodies she has worn 
out and whose immortal part she has left undeveloped or 
debased, as w T e find them here ; and having wasted an 
idle paragraph upon them, let me now suggest that old 
men have a kind of susceptibility to moral impressions, 
and even (up to an advanced period) a receptivity of 



A LONDON SUBURB. 257 

truth, which often appears to come to them after the 
active time of life is past. The Greenwich pensioners 
might prove better subjects for true education now than 
in their school-boy days ; but then where is the Normal 
School that could educate instructors for such a class ? 

There is a beautiful chapel for the pensioners, in the 
classic style, over the altar of which hangs a picture by 
West. I never could look at it long enough to make out 
its design ; for this artist (though it pains me to say it of 
so respectable a countryman) had a gift of frigidity, a 
knack of grinding ice into his paint, a power of stupefy- 
ing the spectator's perceptions and quelling his sympathy, 
beyond any other limner that ever handled a brush. In 
spite of many pangs of conscience, I seize this opportu- 
nity to wreak a lifelong abhorrence upon the poor, blame- 
less man, for the sake of that dreary picture of Lear, an 
explosion of frosty fury, that used to be a bugbear to 
me in the Athenaeum Exhibition. Would fire burn it, I 
wonder ? 

The principal thing that they have to show you, at 
Greenwich Hospital, is the Painted Hall. It is a splendid 
and spacious room, at least a hundred feet long and half 
as high, with a ceiling painted in fresco by Sir James 
Thornhill. As a work of art, I presume, this frescoed 
canopy has little merit, though it produces an exceedingly 
rich effect by its brilliant coloring and as a specimen of 
magnificent upholstery. The walls of the grand apart- 
ment are entirely covered with pictures, many of them 
representing battles and other naval incidents that wero 
once fresher in the world's memory than now, but chiefly 
portraits of old admirals, comprising the whole line of 
heroes who have trod the quarter-decks of British ships 
for more than two hundred years back. Next to a tomb 
in Westminster Abbey, which was Nelson's most elevated 

Q 



258 A LONDON SUBURB. 

object of ambition, it would seem to be the highest meed 
of a naval warrior to have his portrait hung up in the 
Painted Hall; but, by dint of victory upon victory, these 
illustrious personages have grown to be a mob, and by 
no means a very interesting one, so far as regards the 
character of the faces here depicted. They are generally 
commonplace, and often singularly stolid; and I have 
observed (both in the Painted Hall and elsewhere, and 
not only in portraits, but in the actual presence of such 
renowned people as I have caught glimpses of) that the 
countenances of heroes are not nearly so impressive as 
those of statesmen, — except, of course, in the rare in- 
stances where warlike ability has been but the one-sided 
manifestation of a profound genius for managing the 
world's affairs. Nine tenths of these distinguished ad- 
mirals, for instance, if their faces tell truth, must nerds 
have been blockheads, and might have served better, one 
would imagine, as wooden figure-heads for their own ships 
than to direct any difficult and intricate scheme of action 
from the quarter-deck. It is doubtful whether the same 
kind of men will hereafter meet with a similar degree of 
success ; for they were victorious chiefly through the old 
English hardihood, exercised in a field of which modern 
science had not yet got possession. Rough valor has 
lost, something of its value, since their days, and must 
continue to sink lower and lower in the comparative esti- 
mate of warlike qualities. In the next naval war, as 
between England and France, I would bet, metliinks, 
upon the Frenchman's head. 

It is remarkable, however, that the great naval hero of 
England — the greatest, therefore, in the world, and of 
all time — had none of the stolid characteristics that be- 
long to his class, and cannot fairly be accepted as their 
representative man. Foremost in the roughest of pro- 



A LONDON SUBURB. 259 

fessions, lie was as delicately organized as a woman, and 
as painfully sensitive as a poet. More than any other 
Englishman he won the love and admiration of his coun- 
try, but won them through the efficacy of qualities that 
are not English, or, at all events, were intensified in his 
case and made poignant and powerful by something mor- 
bid in the man, which put him otherwise at cross-pur- 
poses with life. He was a man of genius ; and genius in 
an Englishman (not to cite the good old simile of a pearl 
in the oyster) is usually a symptom of a lack of balance 
in the general making-up of the character; as Ave may 
satisfy ourselves by running over the list of their poets, 
for example, and observing how many of them have been 
sickly or deformed, and how often their lives have been 
darkened by insanity. An ordinary Englishman is the 
healthiest and wholesomest of human beings; an extraor- 
dinary one is almost always, in one way or another, a 
sick man. It was so with Lord Nelson. The wonder- 
ful contrast or relation between his personal qualities, the 
position which he held, and the life that he lived, makes 
him as interesting a personage as all history has to show; 
and it is a pity that Southey's biography — so good in its 
superficial way, and yet so inadequate as regards any 
real delineation of the man — should have taken the 
subject out of the hands of some writer endowed with 
more delicate appreciation and deeper insight than that 
genuine Englishman possessed. But Southey accom- 
plished his own purpose, which, apparently, was to pre- 
sent his hero as a pattern for England's young mid- 
shipmen. 

But the English capacity for hero-worship is full to 
the brim with what they are able to comprehend of Lord 
Nelson's character. Adjoining the Painted Hall is a 
smaller room, the walls of which are completely and ex- 



260 A LONDON SUBURB. 

clusively adorned with pictures of the great Admiral's 
exploits. We see the frail, ardent man in all the most 
noted events of his career, from Lis encounter with a 
Polar bear to his death at Trafalgar, quivering here and 
there about the room like a blue, lambent flame. No 
Briton ever enters that apartment without feeling the 
beef and ale of his composition stirred to its depths, and 
finding himself changed into a hero for the nonce, how- 
ever stolid his brain, however tough his heart, however 
unexcitable his ordinary mood. To confess the truth, I 
myself, though belonging to another parish, have been 
deeply sensible to the sublime recollections there aroused, 
acknowledging that Nelson expressed his life in a kind of 
symbolic poetry which I had as much right to understand 
as these burly islanders. Cool and critical observer as 
I sought to be, I enjoyed their burst of honest indigna- 
tion when a visitor (not an American, I am glad to say) 
thrust his walking-stick almost into Nelson's face, in one 
of the pictures, by way of pointing a remark ; and the 
bystanders immediately glowed like so many hot coals, 
and would probably have consumed the offender in their 
wrath, had he not effected his retreat. But the most sa- 
cred objects of all are two of Nelson's coats, under sep- 
arate glass cases. One is that which lie wore at the Bat- 
tle of the Nile, and it is now sadly injured by moths, 
which will quite destroy it in a few years, unless its 
guardians preserve it as we do Washington's military 
suit, by occasionally baking it in an oven. The other is 
the coat in which he received his death-wound at Trafal- 
gar. On its breast are sewed three or four stars and 
orders of knighthood, now much dimmed by time and 
damp, but which glittered brightly enough on the battle- 
day to draw the fatal aim of a French marksman. The 
bullet-hole is visible on the shoulder, as well as a part of 



A LONDON SUBURB. 261 

the golden tassels of an epaulet, the rest of wliicli was 
shot away. Over the coat is laid a white waistcoat with 
a great blood-stain on it, out of which all the redness has 
utterly faded, leaving it of a dingy yellow hue, in the 
threescore years since that blood gushed out. Yet it 
was once the reddest blood in England, — Nelson's blood ! 

The hospital stands close adjacent to the town of 
Greenwich, which will always retain a kind of festal 
aspect in my memory, in consequence of my having first 
become acquainted with it on Easter Monday. Till a 
few years ago, the first three days of Easter were a carni- 
val season in this old town, during which the idle and 
disreputable part of London poured itself into the streets 
like an inundation of the Thames, — as unclean as that 
turbid mixture of the offscourings of the vast city, and 
overflowing with its grimy pollution whatever rural inno- 
cence, if any, might be found in the suburban neighbor- 
hood. This festivity was called Greenwich Fair, the 
final one of which, in an immemorial succession, it was 
my fortune to behold. 

If I had bethought myself of going through the fair 
with a note-book and pencil, jotting down all the promi- 
nent objects, I doubt not that the result might have been 
a sketch of English life quite as characteristic and worthy 
of historical preservation as an account of the Roman 
Carnival. Having neglected to do so, I remember little 
more than a confusion of unwashed and shabbily dressed 
people, intermixed with some smarter figures, but, on the 
whole, presenting a inobbish appearance such as we never 
see in our own country. It taught me to understand why 
Shakespeare, in speaking of a crowd, so often alludes to 
its attribute of evil odor. The common people of Eng- 
land, I am afraid, have no daily familiarity with even so 
necessary a thing as a wash-bowl, not to mention a bath- 



26.2 A LONDON SUBURB. 

ing-tub. And furthermore, it is one mighty difference 
between them and us, that every man and woman on our 
side of the water has a working-day suit and a holiday 
suit, and is occasionally as fresh as a rose, whereas, in 
the good old country, the griminess of his labor or squalid 
habits clings forever to the individual, and gets to be a 
part of liis personal substance. These are broad facts, 
involving great corollaries and dependencies. There are 
really, if you stop to think about it, few sadder spectacles 
in the world than a ragged coat, or a soiled and shabby 
gown, at a festival. 

This nnfragrant crowd was exceedingly dense, being 
welded together, as it were, in the street through which 
we strove to make our way. On either side were oys- 
ter-stands, stalls of oranges (a very prevalent fruit in 
England, where they give the withered ones a guise of 
freshness by boiling them), and booths covered with old 
sail-cloth, in which the commodity that most attracted the 
eye was gilt gingerbread. It was so completely envel- 
oped in Dutch gilding that I did not at first recognize an 
old acquaintance, but wondered what those golden crowns 
and images could be. There were likewise drums and 
other toys for small children, and a variety of showy and 
worthless articles for children of a. larger growth; though 
it perplexed me to imagine who, in such a mob, could 
have the innocent taste to desire playthings, or the money 
to pay for them. Not that I have a right to accuse the 
mob, on my own knowledge, of being any less innocent 
than a set of cleaner and better dressed people might 
have been; for, though one of them stole my pocket- 
handkerchief, I could not but consider it fair game, un- 
der the circumstances, and was grateful to the thief for 
sparing me my purse. They were quiet, civil, and re- 
markably good-humored, making due allowance for the 



A LONDON SUBURB. 263 

national gruffness ; there was no riot, no tumultuous 
swaying to and fro of the mass, such as I have often 
noted in an American crowd, no noise of voices, except 
frequent bursts of laughter, hoarse or shrill, and a widely 
diffused, inarticulate murmur, resembling nothing so much 
as the rumbling of the tide among the arches of London 
Bridge. What immensely perplexed me was a sharp, 
angry sort of rattle, in all quarters, far off and close at 
hand, and sometimes right at my own back, where it 
sounded as if the stout fabric of my English surtout had 
been ruthlessly rent in twain ; and everybody's clothes, 
all over the fair, were evidently being torn asunder in the 
same way. By and by, I discovered that this strange 
noise was produced by a little instrument called "The 
Tun of the Fair," — a sort of rattle, consisting of a 
wooden wheel, the cogs of which turn against a thin slip 
of wood, and so produce a rasping sound when drawn 
smartly against a person's back. The ladies draw their 
rattles against the backs of their male friends (and every- 
body passes for a friend at Greenwich Fair), and the young- 
men return the compliment on the broad British backs of 
the ladies ; and all are bound by immemorial custom to 
take it in good part and be merry at the joke. As it was 
one of my prescribed official duties to give an account of 
such mechanical contrivances as might be unknown in my 
own country, I have thought it right to be thus particular 
in describing the Fun of the Fair. 

But this was far from being the sole amusement. 
There were theatrical booths, in front of which were 
pictorial representations ^of the scenes to be enacted 
within ; and anon a drummer emerged from one of them, 
thumping on a terribly lax drum, and followed by the 
entire dramatis persona', who ranged themselves on a 
wooden platform in front of the theatre. They were 



264 A LONDON SUBURB. 

dressed in character, but wofully shabby, with very dingy 
and wrinkled white tights, threadbare cotton-velvets, 
crumpled silks, and crushed muslin, and all I he gloss and 
glory gone out of their aspect and attire, seen thus in 
the broad daylight and after a long series of perform- 
ances. They sang a song together, and withdrew into 
the theatre, whither the public were iuvited to follow 
them at the inconsiderable cost of a penny a ticket. Be~ 
fore another booth stood a pair of brawny fighting-men, 
displaying their muscle, and soliciting patronage for au 
exhibition of the noble British art of pugilism. There 
were pictures of giants, monsters, and outlandish beasts, 
most prodigious, to be sure, and worthy of all admiration, 
unless the artist had gone incomparably beyond his sub- 
ject. Jugglers proclaimed aloud the miracles which they 
Mere prepared to work ; and posture-makers dislocated 
every joint of their bodies and tied their limbs into inex- 
tricable knots, wherever they could find space to spread 
a little square of carpet on the ground. In the midst 
of the confusion, while everybody was treading on his 
neighbor's toes, some little boys were very solicitous to 
brush your boots. These lads, I believe, are a product 
of modern society, — at least, no older than the time of 
(Jay, who celebrates their origin in his "Trivia"; but in 
most other respects the scene reminded me of Bunyan's 
description of Vanity Fair, — nor is it at all improbable 
that the Pilgrim may have been a merry-maker here, in 
his wild youth. 

It seemed very singular — though, of course, I imme- 
diately classified it as an English characteristic — to see 
a great many portable weighing-machines, the owners of 
which cried out continually and amain, " Come, know 
your weight .! Come, come, know your weight to-day ! 
Come, know your weight ! " and a multitude of people, 



A LONDON SUBURB. 205 

mostly large in the girth, were moved by this vocifera- 
tion to sit clown in the machines. I know not whether 
they valued themselves on their beef, and estimated their 
standing as members of society at so much a pound ; bnt 
I shall set it down as a national peculiarity, and a symbol 
of the prevalence of the earthly over the spiritual ele- 
ment, that Englishmen are wonderfully bent on knowing- 
how solid and physically ponderous they are. 

On the whole, having an appetite for the brown bread 
and the tripe and sausages of life, as well as for its nicer 
cates and dainties, I enjoyed the scene, and was amused 
at the sight of a gruff old Greenwich pensioner, who, 
forgetful of the sailor-frolics of his young days, stood 
looking with grim disapproval at all these vanities. Thus 
we squeezsd our way through the mob-jammed town, 
and emerged into the Park, where, likewise, we met a 
great many merry-makers, but with freer space for their 
gambols than in the streets. We soon found ourselves 
the targets for a cannonade with oranges (most of them 
in a decayed condition), which went humming past our 
ears from the vantage-ground of neighboring hillocks, 
sometimes hitting our sacred persons with an inelastic 
thump. This was one of the privileged freedoms of the 
time, and was nowise to be resented, except by returning 
the salute. Many persons were running races, hand in 
hand, down the declivities, especially that steepest one on 
the summit of which stands the world-central Observa- 
tory, and (as in the race of life) the partners were usually 
male and female, and often caught a tumble together 
before reaching the bottom of the hill. Hereabouts 
we were pestered and haunted by two young girls, the 
eldest not more than thirteen, teasing us to buy matches; 
and finding no market for their commodity, the taller one 
suddenly turned a somerset before our faces, and rolled 
12 



266 A LONDON SUBURB. 

heels over head from top to bottom of the hill on which 
we stood. Then, scrambling up the acclivity, the topsy- 
turvy trollop offered us her matches again, as demurely 
as if she had never flung aside her equilibrium ; so that, 
dreading a repetition of the feat, we gave her sixpence 
and an admonition, and enjoined her never to do so any 
more. 

The most curious amusement that we witnessed here — 
or anywhere else, indeed — was an ancient and hereditary 
pastime called " Kissing in the Ring." I shall describe 
the sport exactly as I saw it, although an English friend 
assures me that there are certain ceremonies with a hand- 
kerchief, which make it much more decorous and grace- 
ful. A handkerchief, indeed ! There was no such thing 
in the crowd, except it were the one which they had just 
filched out of my pocket, It is one of the simplest kinds 
of games, needing little or no practice to make the player 
altogether perfect ; and the manner of it is this. A ring 
is formed (in the present case, it was of large circum- 
ference and thickly gemmed around with faces, mostly on 
the broad grin), into the centre of which steps an ad- 
venturous youth, and, looking round the circle, selects 
whatever maiden may most delight his eye. He pre- 
sents his hand (which she is bound to accept), leads her 
into the centre, salutes her on the lips, and retires, taking 
his stand in the expectant circle. The girl, in her turn, 
throws a favorable regard on some fortunate young man, 
offers her hand to lead him forth, makes him happy with 
a maideuly kiss, and withdraws to hide her blushes, if 
any there be, among the simpering faces in the ring; 
while the favored swain loses no time in transferring her 
salute to the prettiest and plumpest among the many 
mouths that are primming themselves in anticipation. 
And thus the thing goes on, till all the festive throng are 



A LONDON SUBURB. 267 

inwreatlied and intertwined into an endless and inex- 
tricable chain of kisses; though, indeed, it smote me with 
compassion to reflect, that some forlorn pair of lips might 
be left out, and never know the triumph of a salute, after 
throwing aside so many delicate reserves for the sake of 
winning- it. If the young men had any chivalry, there 
was a fair chance to display it by kissing the homeliest 
damsel in the circle. 

To be frank, however, at the first glance, and to my 
American eye, they looked all homely alike, and the 
chivalry that 1 suggest is more than I could have been 
capable of, at any period of my life. Tl^f seemed to 
be country-lasses, of sturdy and wholesome aspect, with 
coarse-grained, cabbage-rosy cheeks, and, I am willing to 
suppose, a stout texture of moral principle, such as would 
bear a good deal of rough usage without suffering much 
detriment. But how unlike the trim little damsels of 
my native land! I desire above all things to-be cour- 
teous; but, since the plain truth must be told, the soil 
and climate of England produce feminine beauty as rarely 
as they do delicate fruit, and though admirable specimens 
of both are to be met with, they are the hot-house ameli- 
orations of refined society, and apt, moreover, to relapse 
into the coarseness of the original stock. The men are 
manlike, but the women are not beautiful, though the 
female Bull be well enough adapted to the male. To 
return to the lasses of Greenwich Fair, their charms were 
few, and their behavior, perhaps, not altogether com- 
mendable ; and yet it was impossible not to feel a degree 
of faith in their innocent intentions, with such a half- 
bashful zest and entire simplicity did they keep up their 
part of the game. It put the spectator in good-humor 
to look at them, because there was still something of the 
old Arcadian life, the secure freedom of the antique age, 



268 A- LONDON SUBURB. 

ill their way of surrendering their l|ps to strangers, as if 
there were no evil or impurity in the world. As for the 
young men, they were chiefly specimens of the vulgar 
sediment of London life, often shabbily genteel, rowdyish, 
pale, wearing the unbrushed coat, mishitted linen, and 
unwashed faces of yesterday, as well as the haggardness 
of last night's jollity in a gin-shop. Gathering their 
character from these tokens, I wondered whether there 
were any reasonable prospect of their fair partners re- 
turning to their rustic homos with as much innocence 
(whatever were its amount or quality) as they brought 
to Greenwich Fair, in spite of the perilous familiarity 
established by Kissing in the Ring. 

The manifold disorders resulting from the fair, at 
which a vast city was brought into intimate relations with 
a comparatively rural district, have at length led to its 
suppression ; this was the very last celebration of it, and 
brought to a close the broad-mouthed merriment of many 
hundred years. Thus my poor sketch, faint as its colors 
are, may acquire some little value in the reader's eyes 
from the consideration that no observer of the coming 
time will ever have an opportunity to give a better. I 
should find it difficult to believe, however, that the queer 
pastime just described, or any moral mischief to which 
that and other customs might pave the way, can have led 
to the overthrow of Greenwich Fair; for it has often 
seemed to me that Englishmen of station and respecta- 
bility, unless of a peculiarly philanthropic turn, have 
neither any faith in the feminine purity of the lower or- 
ders of their countrywomen, nor the slightest value for 
it, allowing its possible existence. The distinction of 
ranks is so marked, that the English cottage damsel holds 
a position somewhat analogous to that of the negro girl 
in our Southern States. Hence comes inevitable detri- 



A LONDON SUBURB. 269 

ment to the moral condition of those men "themselves, 
who forget that the humblest woman lias a right and a 
duty to hold herself in the same sanctity as the highest. 
The subject cannot well be discussed in these pages ; but 
I offer it as a serious conviction, from what 1 have been 
able to observe, that the England of to-day is the un- 
scrupulous old England of Tom Jones and Joseph An- 
drews, Humphrey Clinker and Roderick Random; and 
in our refined era, just the same as at that more free- 
spoken epoch, this singular people has a certain con- 
tempt for any fine-strained purity, any special squeam- 
islmess, as they consider it, on the part of an ingenuous 
youth. They appear to look upon it as a suspicious 
phenomenon in the masculine character. 

Nevertheless, I by no means take upon me to affirm 
that English morality, as regards the phase here alluded 
to, is really at a lower point than our own. Assuredly, 
1 hope so, because, making a higher pretension, or. at all 
events, more carefully hiding whatever may be amiss, we 
are either better than they, or necessarily a great deal 
worse. It impressed me that their open avowal and 
recognition of immoralities served to throw the disease 
to the surface, where it might be more effect ually dealt 
with, and leave a sacred interior not utterly profaned, 
instead of turning its poison back among the inner vitali- 
ties of the character, at the imminent risk of corrupting 
them all. Re that as it may, these Englishmen are cer- 
tainly a franker and simpler people than ourselves, from 
peer to peasant ; but if we can take it as compensatory 
on our part (which I leave to be considered) that they 
owe those noble and manly qualities to a coarser grain in 
their nature, and that, with a finer one in ours, we shall 
ultimately acquire a marble polish of which they are un- 
susceptible, I believe that this may be the truth. 



UP THE THAMES. 



T~m 



HE upper portion of Greenwich (where my last 
article left me loitering) is a cheerful, comely, 
old-fashioned town, the peculiarities of which, 
if there be any, have passed out of my remembrance. 
As you descend towards the Thames, the streets get 
meaner, and the shabby and sunken houses, elbowing 
one another for frontage, bear the sign-boards of beer- 
shops and eating-rooms, with especial promises of white- 
bait and other delicacies in the fishing line. You observe, 
also, a frequent announcement of " Tea Gardens " in the 
rear ; although, estimating the capacity of the premises 
by their external compass, the entire sylvan charm and 
shadowy seclusion of such blissful resorts must be limited 
within a small back-yard. These places of cheap suste- 
nance and recreation depend for support upon the innu- 
merable pleasure -parties who come from London Bridge 
by steamer, at a fare of a few pence, and who get as en- 
joyable a meal for a shilling a head as the Ship Hotel 
would afford a gentleman for a guinea. 

The steamers, which are constantly smoking their 
pipes up aud down the Thames, offer much the most 
agreeable mode of getting to London. At least, it might 
be exceedingly agreeable, except for the myriad floating 
particles of soot from the stove-pipe, and the heavy heat 



UP THE THAMES. 271 

of midsummer sunshine on the unsheltered deck, or the 
chill, misty air draught of a cloudy day, and the spiteful 
little showers of rain that may spatter down upon you at 
any moment, whatever the promise of the sky; besides 
which there is some slight inconvenience from the inex- 
haustible throng of passengers, who scarcely allow you 
standing-room, nor so much as a breath of unappropri- 
ated air, and never a chance to sit down. If these difficul- 
ties, added to the possibility of getting your pocket picked, 
weigh little with you, the panorama along the shores of 
the memorable river, and the incidents and shows of pass- 
ing life upon its bosom, render the trip far preferable to 
the brief yet tiresome shoot along the railway track. On 
one such voyage, a regatta of wherries raced past us, and 
at once involved every soul on board our steamer in the 
tremendous excitement of the struggle. The spectacle 
was but a moment within our view, and presented noth- 
ing more than a few light skiffs, in each of which sat a 
single rower, bare-armed, and with little apparel, save a 
shirt and drawers, pale, anxious, with every muscle on 
the stretch, and plying his oars in such fashion that the 
boat skimmed along with the aerial celerity of a swallow. 
I wondered at myself for so immediately catching an 
interest in the affair, which seemed to contain no very 
exalted rivalship of manhood ; but, whatever the kind of 
battle or the prize of victory, it stirs one's sympathy im- 
mensely, and is even awful, to behold the rare sight of a 
man thoroughly in earnest, doing his best, putting forth 
all there is in him, and staking his very soul (as these 
rowers appeared willing to do) on the issue of the con- 
test. It was the seventy-fourth annual regatta of the 
Free Watermen of Greenwich, and announced itself as 
under the patronage of the Lord Mayor and other dis- 
tinguished individuals, at whose expense, I suppose, a 



tit UP THE THAMES. 

prize-boat was offered to the conqueror, and some small 
amounts of money to the inferior competitors. 

The aspect of London along the Thames, below Bridge, 
as it is called, is by no means so impressive as it ought 
to be, considering what peculiar advantages are offered 
for the display of grand and stately architecture by the 
passage of a river through the midst of a great city. It 
seems, indeed, as if the heart of Loudon had been cleft 
open for the mere purpose of showing how rotten and 
drearily mean it had become. The shore is lined with 
the shabbiest, blackest, and ugliest buildings that can be 
imagined, decayed warehouses with blind windows, and 
wharves (hat look ruinous; insomuch that, had I known 
nothing more of the world's metropolis, I might have 
fancied that it had already experienced the downfall 
which I have heard commercial and financial prophets 
predict for it, within the century. And the muddy tide 
of the Thames, reflecting nothing, and hiding a million 
of unclean secrets within its breast, — a sort of guilty 
conscience, as it were, unwholesome with the rivulets of 
sin that constantly flow into it, — is just the dismal 
stream to glide by such a city. The surface, to be sure, 
displays no lack of activity, being fretted by the passage 
of a hundred steamers and covered witli a good deal of 
shipping, but mostly of a clumsier build than I had been 
accustomed to see in the Mersey : a fact which I com- 
placently attributed to the smaller number of American 
clippers in the Thames, and the less prevalent influence 
of American example in refining away the broad-bottomed 
capacity of the old Dutch or English models. 

About midway between Greenwich and London Bridge, 
at a rude landing-place on the left bank of the river, the 
steamer rings its bell and makes a momentary pause in 
front of a large circular structure, where it may be worth 



UP THE THAMES. 273 

our while to scramble asliore. It indicates the locality of 
one of those prodigious practical blunders that would 
supply John Bull with a topic of inexhaustible ridicule, if 
his cousin Jonathan had committed them, but of which 
he himself perpetrates ten to our one in the mere wanton- 
ness of wealth that lacks better employment. The cir- 
cular building covers the entrance to the Thames Tunnel, 
and is surmounted by a dome of glass, so as to throw 
daylight down into the great depth at which the passage 
of the river commences. Descending a wearisome suc- 
cession of staircases, we at last find ourselves, still in the 
broad noon, standing before a closed door, on opening 
which we behold the vista of an arched corridor that 
extends into everlasting midnight. In these days, when 
glass has been applied 1o so many new purposes, it is a 
pity that the architect had not thought of arching por- 
tions of his abortive tunnel with immense blocks of the 
lucid substance, over which the dusky Thames would 
have flowed like a cloud, making the sub-flnvial avenue 
only a little gloomier than a street of upper London. At 
present, it is illuminated at regular intervals by jets of 
gas, not very brilliantly, yet with lustre enough to show 
the damp plaster of the ceiling and walls, and the mas- 
sive stone pavement, the crevices of which are oozy with 
moisture, not from the incumbent river, but from hidden 
springs in the earth's deeper heart. There are two par- 
allel corridors, with a wall between, for the separate 
accommodation of the double throng of foot-passengers, 
equestrians, and vehicles of all kinds, which was expected 
to roll and reverberate continually through the Tunnel. 
Only one of them has ever been opened, and its echoes 
are but feebly awakened by infrequent footfalls. 

Yet there seem to be people who spend their lives here, 
and who probably blink like owls, when, once or twice a 
12* R 



27 i UP THE THAMES. 

year, perhaps, they happen to climb into the sunshine. 
All along the corridor, which I believe to be a mile in 
extent, we see stalls or shops in little alcoves, kept prin- 
cipally by women ; they were of a ripe age, I was glad to 
observe, and certainly robbed England of none of its very 
moderate supply of feminine loveliness by their deeper 
than tomb-like interment. As yon approach (and they 
are so accustomed to the dusky gaslight that they read 
all your characteristics afar off), they assail you with hun- 
gry entreaties to buy some of their merchandise, holding 
forth views of the Tunnel put up in cases of Derbyshire 
spar, with a magnify ing-glass at one end to make the 
vista more effective. They oiler you, besides, cheap jew- 
elry, sunny topazes and resplendent emeralds for six- 
pence, and diamonds as big as the Koh-i-noor at a not 
much heavier cost, together with a multifarious trumpery 
which has died out of the upper world to reappear in this 
Tartarean bazaar. That you may fancy yourself still in 
the realms of the living, they urge you to partake of 
cakes, candy, ginger-beer, and such small refreshment, 
more suitable, however, for the shadowy appetite of 
ghosts, than for the sturdy stomachs of Englishmen. The 
most capacious of the shops contains a dioramic exhibi- 
tion of cities and scenes in the daylight world, with a 
dreary glimmer of gas among them all ; so that they 
serve well enough to represent the dim, unsatisfactory 
remembrances that dead people might be supposed to 
retain from their past lives, mixing them up with the 
ghastliness of their unsubstantial state. I dwell the 
more upon these trifles, and do my best to give them a 
mockery of importance, because, if these are nothing, 
then all this elaborate contrivance and mighty piece of 
work has been wrought in vain. The Englishman has 
burrowed under the bed of his great river, and set ships of 



UP THE THAMES. Z i 

two or three thousand tons a-rolling over his head, only 
to provide new sites for a few old women to sell cakes 
and ginger-beer ! 

Yet the conception was a grand one ; and though it has 
proved an absolute failure, swallowing an immensity of 
toil and money, with annual returns hardly sufficient to 
keep the pavement free from the ooze of subterranean 
springs, yet it needs, I presume, only an expenditure 
three or four (or, for aught I know, twenty) times as large, 
to make the enterprise brilliantly successful. The descent 
is so great from the bank of the river to its surface, and 
the Tunnel dips so profoundly under the river's bed, that 
the approaches on either side must commence a long way 
off, in order to render the entrance accessible to horsemen 
or vehicles; so that the larger part of the cost of the 
whole affair should have been expended on its margins. 
It has turned out a sublime piece of folly ; and when the 
New-Zealander of distant ages shall have moralized suffi- 
ciently among the ruins of London Bridge, he will bethink 
himself that somewhere thereabout was the marvellous 
Tunnel, the very existence of which will seem to him as in- 
credible as that of the hanging gardens of Babylon. But 
the Thames will long ago have broken through the massive 
arch, and choked up the corridors with mud and sand 
and with the large stones of the structure itself, inter- 
mixed with skeletons of drowned people, the rusty iron- 
work of sunken vessels, and the great many such precious 
and curious things as a river always contrives to hide in 
its bosom ; the entrance will have been obliterated, and 
its very site forgotten beyond the memory of twenty 
generations of men, and the whole neighborhood be held 
a dangerous spot on account of the malaria ; insomuch 
that the traveller will make but a brief and careless in- 
quisition for the traces of the old wonder, and will stake 



276 UP THE THAMES. 

his credit before the public, in some Pacific Monthly of 
that clay, that the story of it is but a myth, though en- 
riched with a spiritual profundity which he will proceed 
to unfold. 

Yet it is impossible (for a Yankee, at least) to see so 
much magnificent ingenuity thrown away, without trying 
to endow the unfortunate result with some kind of use- 
fulness, though perhaps widely different from the pur- 
pose of its original conception. In former ages, the 
mile-long corridors, with their numerous alcoves, might 
have been utilized as a series of dungeons, the fittest of 
all possible receptacles for prisoners of state. Dethroned 
monarclis and fallen statesmen would not have needed to 
remonstrate against a domicile so spacious, so deeply 
secluded from the world's scorn, and so admirably in ac- 
cordance with their thenceforward sunless fortunes. An 
alcove here might have suited Sir Walter Raleigh better 
than that darksome hiding-place communicating with the 
great chamber in the Tower, pacing from end to end of 
which he meditated upon his " History of the World." 
His track would here have been straight and narrow, in- 
deed, and would therefore have lacked somewhat of the 
freedom that his intellect demanded; and yet the length 
to which his footsteps might have travelled forth and 
retraced themselves would partly have harmonized his 
physical movement with the grand curves and planetary 
returns of his thought, through cycles of majestic periods. 
Having it in his mind to compose the world's history, 
methinks he could have asked no better retirement than 
sueh a cloister as this, insulated from all the seductions 
of mankind and womankind, deep beneath their myste- 
ries and motives, down into the heart of things, full of 
personal reminiscences in order to the comprehensive 
measurement and verification of historic records, seeing 



UP THE THAMES. 277 

into the secrets of human nature, — secrets that daylight 
never yet revealed to mortal, — but detecting their whole 
scope and purport with the infallible eyes of unbroken 
solitude and night. And then the shades of the old 
mighty men might have risen from their still profounder 
abodes and joined him in the dim corridor, treading be- 
side him with an antique stateliness of mien, telling him 
in melancholy tones, grand, but always melancholy, of 
the greater ideas and purposes which their most renowned 
performances so imperfectly carried out, that, magnificent 
successes in the view of all posterity, they were but fail- 
ures to those who planned them. As Raleigh was a 
navigator, Noah would have explained to him the pecu- 
liarities of construction that made the ark so seaworthy ; 
as Raleigh was a statesman, Moses would have discussed 
with him the principles of laws and government ; as Ra- 
leigh was a soldier, Caesar and Hannibal would have held 
debate in his presence, with this martial student for their 
umpire ; as Raleigh was a poet, David, or whatever most 
illustrious bard he might call up, would have touched 
his harp, and made manifest all the true significance of 
the past by means of song and the subtle intelligences of 
music. 

Meanwhile, I had forgotten that Sir Walter Raleigh's 
century knew nothing of gaslight, and that it would re- 
quire a prodigious and wasteful expenditure of tallow- 
candles to illuminate the Tunnel sufficiently to discern 
even a ghost. On this account, however, it would be all 
the more suitable place of confinement for a metaphysi- 
cian, to keep him from bewildering mankind with his 
shadowy speculations ; and, being shut off from external 
converse, the dark corridor would help him to make rich 
discoveries in those cavernous regions and mysterious 
by-paths of the intellect, which he had so long accustomed 



278 UP THE THAMES. 

himself to explore. But how would every successive age 
rejoice in so secure a habitation for its reformers, and 
especially for each best and wisest man that happened to 
be then alive ! He seeks to burn up our whole system 
of society, under pretence of purifying it from its abuses ! 
Away with him into the Tunnel, and let him begin by 
setting the Thames on fire, if he is able ! 

If not precisely these, yet akin to these were some of 
the fantasies that haunted me as I passed under the 
river : for the place is suggestive of such idle and irre- 
sponsible stuff by its own abortive character, its lack of 
whereabout on upper earth, or any solid foundation of 
realities. Could I have looked forward a few years, I 
might have regretted that American enterprise had not 
provided a similar tunnel, under the Hudson or the Po- 
tomac, for the convenience of our National Government 
iu times hardly yet gone by. It would be delightful to 
clap up all the enemies of our peace and Union in the 
dark together, and there let them abide, listening to the 
monotonous roll of the river above their heads, or per- 
haps in a state of miraculously suspended animation, 
until, — be it after months, years, or centuries, — when 
the turmoil shall be all over, the Wrong washed away in 
blood (since that must needs be the cleansing fluid), and 
the Right firmly rooted in the soil which that blood will 
have enriched, they might crawl forth again and catch a 
single glimpse at their redeemed country, and feel it to 
be a better land than they deserve, and die ! 

I was not sorry when the daylight reached me after a 
much briefer abode in the nether regions than, I fear, 
would await the troublesome personages just hinted at. 
Emerging on the Surrey side of the Thames, I found 
myself in Rotherhithe, a neighborhood not unfamiliar to 
the readers of old books of maritime adventure. There 



UP THE THAMES. 279 

being a ferry bard by the mouth, of the Tunnel, I re- 
crossed the river in the primitive fashion of an open 
boat, which the conflict of wind and tide, together with 
the swash and swell of the passing steamers, tossed high 
and low rather tumultuously. This inquietude of our 
frail skiff (which, indeed, bobbed up and down like a 
cork) so much alarmed an old lady, the only other pas- 
senger, that the boatmen essayed to comfort her. " Never 
fear, mother ! " grumbled one of them, " we '11 make the 
river as smooth as we can for you. We '11 get a plane, 
and plane clown the waves! " The joke may not read 
very brilliantly ; but I make bold to record it as the only 
specimen that reached my ears of the old, rough water- 
wit for which the Thames used to be so celebrated. 
Passing directly along the line of the sunken Tunnel, we 
landed in Wapping, which I should have presupposed to 
be the most tarry and pitchy spot on earth, swarming 
with old salts, and full of warm, bustling, coarse, homely, 
and cheerful life. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a 
cold and torpid neighborhood, mean, shabby, and un- 
picturesque, both as to its buildings and inhabitants : the 
latter comprising (so far as was visible to me) not a 
single unmistakable sailor, though plenty of land-sharks, 
who get a half-dishonest livelihood by business connected 
with the sea. Ale and spirit vaults (as petty drinking- 
establishments are styled in England, pretending to con- 
lain vast cellars full of liquor within the compass of ten 
feet square above ground) were particularly abundant, 
together with apples, oranges, and oysters, the stalls of 
fishmongers and butchers, and slop-shops, where blue 
jackets and cluck trousers swung and capered before the 
doors. Everything was on the poorest scale, and the 
place bore an aspect of unredeemable decay. From this 
remote point of London, I strolled leisurely towards the 



280 UP THE THAMES. 

heart of the city ; while the streets, at first but thinly 
occupied by man or vehicle, got more and more thronged 
with foot-passengers, carts, drays, cabs, and the all-per- 
vading and all-accommodating omnibus. But I lack 
courage, and feel that I should lack perseverance, as the 
gentlest reader would lack patience, to undertake a 
descriptive stroll through London streets; more espe- 
cially as there would be a volume ready for the printer 
before we could reach a midway resting-place at Char- 
ing Cross. It will be the easier course to step aboard 
another passing steamer, and continue our trip up the 
Thames. 

The next notable group of objects is an assemblage of 
ancient walls, battlements, and turrets, out of the midst 
of which rises prominently one great square tower, of a 
grayish hue, bordered with white stone, and having a 
small turret at each corner of the roof. This central 
structure is the White Tower, and the whole circuit of 
ramparts and enclosed edifices constitutes what is known 
in English history, and still more widely and impres- 
sively in English poetry, as the Tower. A crowd of river- 
craft are generally moored in front of it ; but if we look 
sharply at the right moment under the base of the ram- 
part, we may catch a glimpse of an arched water- 
entrance, half submerged, past which the Thames glides 
as indifferently as if it were the mouth of a city-kennel. 
Nevertheless, it is the Traitor's Gate, a dreary kind of 
triumphal passageway (now supposed to be shut up and 
barred forever), through which a multitude of noble and 
illustrious personages have entered the Tower and found 
il a brief resting-place on their way to heaven. Passing 
it many times, I never observed that anybody glanced at 
th'.s shadowy and ominous trap-door, save myself. It is 
well that America exists, if it were only that her vagrant 



UP THE THAMES. 281 

children may be impressed and affected by the historical 
monuments of England in a degree of which the native 
inhabitants are evidently incapable. These matters are 
too familiar, too real, and too hopelessly built in amongst 
and mixed up with the common objects and affairs of life, 
to be easily susceptible of imaginative coloring in their 
minds ; and even their poets and romancers feel it a toil, 
and almost a delusion, to extract poetic material out of 
what seems embodied poetry itself to an American. An 
Englishman cares nothing about the Tower, which to us 
is a haunted castle in dreamland. That honest and ex- 
cellent gentleman, the late Mr. G. P. 11. James (whose 
mechanical ability, one might have supposed, would nour- 
ish itself by devouring every old stone of such a struc- 
ture), once assured me that he had never in his life set 
eyes upon the Tower, though for years an historic novel- 
ist in London. 

Not to spend a whole summer's day upon the voyage, 
we will suppose ourselves to have reached London Bridge, 
and thence to have taken another steamer for a farther 
passage up the river. But here the memorable objects 
succeed each other so rapidly that I can spare but a sin- 
gle sentence even for the great Dome, though I deem it 
more picturesque, in that dusky atmosphere, than St. 
Peter's in its clear blue sky. I must mention, however 
(since everything connected with royalty is especially in- 
teresting to my dear countrymen), that I once saw a large 
and beautiful barge, splendidly gilded and ornamented, 
and overspread with a rich covering, lying at the pier 
nearest to St. Paul's Cathedral; it had the royal banner 
of Great Britain displayed, besides being decorated with 
a number of other flags ; and many footmen (who are 
universally the grandest and gaudiest objects to be seen 
in England at this day, and these were regal ones, in a 



282 UP THE THAMES. 

bright scarlet livery bedizened with gold-lace, and white 
silk stockings) were in attendance. I know not what 
festive or ceremonial occasion may have drawn out this 
pageant ; after all, it might have been merely a city- 
spectacle, appertaining to the Lord Mayor ; but the sight 
had its value in bringing vividly before me the grand old 
times when the sovereign and nobles were accustomed 
to use the Thames as the high street of the metropolis, 
and join in pompous processions upon it; whereas, the 
desuetude of such customs, nowadays, has caused the 
whole show of river-life to consist in a multitude of 
smoke-begrimed steamers. An analogous change has 
taken place in the streets, where cabs and the omnibus 
have crowded out a rich variety of vehicles ; and thus 
life gets more monotonous in hue from age to age, and 
appears to seize every opportunity to strip off a bit of its 
gold-lace among the wealthier classes, and to make itself 
decent in the lower ones. 

Yonder is Whitefriars, the old rowdy Alsatia, now 
we'aring as decorous a face as any other portion of Lon- 
don ; and, adjoining it, the avenues and brick squares of 
the Temple, with that historic gardeu, close upon the 
river-side, and still rich in shrubbery and flowers, where 
the partisans of York and Lancaster plucked the fatal 
roses, and scattered their pale and bloody petals over so 
many English battle-fields. Hard by, we see the long 
white front or rear of Somerset House, and, farther on, rise 
the two new Houses of Parliament, with a huge unfinished 
tower already hiding its imperfect summit in the smoky 
canopy, — the whole vast and cumbrous edifice a speci- 
men of the best that modern architecture can effect, elab- 
orately imitating the masterpieces of those simple ages 
when men " builded better than they knew." Close by it, 
we have a glimpse of the roof and upper towers of the 



UP THE THAMES. 283 

holy Abbey ; while that gray, ancestral pile on the oppo- 
site side of the river is Lambeth Palace, a venerable 
group of halls and turrets, chiefly built of brick, but 
with at least one large tower of stone. In our course, 
we have passed beneath half a dozen bridges, and, emer- 
ging out of the black heart of London, shall soon reach a 
cleanly suburb, where old Eat her Thames, if I remember, 
begins to put on an aspect of unpolluted innocence. 
And now we look back upon the mass of innumerable 
roofs, out of which rise steeples, towers, columns, and 
the great crowning Dome, — look back, in short, upon 
that mystery of the world's proudest city, amid which a 
man so longs and loves to be ; not, perhaps, because it 
contains much that is positively admirable and enjoyable, 
but because, at all events, the world has nothing better. 
The cream of external life is there ; and whatever merely 
intellectual or material good we fail to find perfect in 
London, we may as well content ourselves to seek that 
unattainable thing no farther on this earth. 

The steamer terminates its trip at Chelsea, an old 
town endowed with a prodigious number of pothouses, 
and some famous gardens, called the Cremorne, for public 
amusement. The most noticeable thing, however, is 
Chelsea Hospital, which, like that of Greenwich, was 
founded, I believe, by Charles II. (whose bronze statue, 
in the guise of an old Roman, stands in the centre of the 
quadrangle,) and appropriated as a home for aged and 
infirm soldiers of the British army. The edifices are of 
three stories with windows in the high roofs, and are 
built of dark, sombre brick, with stone edgings and 
facings. The effect is by no means that of grandeur 
(which is somewhat disagreeably an attribute of Greenwich 
Hospital), but a quiet and venerable neatness. At each 
extremity of the street-front there is a spacious and hos- 



284 UP THE THAMES. 

piiably open gateway, lounging about which I saw some 
gray veterans in long scarlet coats of an antique fashion, 
and the cocked hats of a century ago, or occasionally a 
modern fo raging-cap. Almost all of them moved with a 
rheumatic gait, two or three stumped on wooden legs, 
and here and there an arm was missing. Inquiring of 
one of these fragmentary heroes whether a stranger could 
be admitted to see the establishment, he replied most 
cordially, "O yes, sir, — anywhere! Walk in and go 
where you please, — up stairs, or anywhere ! " So I en- 
tered, and, passing along the inner side of the quadrangle, 
came to the door of the chapel, which forms a part of 
the contiguity of edifices next the street. Here another 
pensioner, an old warrior of exceedingly peaceable and 
Christian demeanor, touched his three-cornered hat and 
asked if I wished to see the interior ; to which I assent- 
ing, he unlocked the door, and we went in. 

The chapel consists of a great hall with a vaulted roof, 
and over the altar is a large painting in fresco, the subject 
of which I did not trouble myself to make out. More 
appropriate adornments of the place, dedicated as well 
to martial reminiscences as religious worship, are the long 
ranges of dusty and tattered banners that hang from 
their staves all round the ceiling of the chapel. They 
are trophies of battles fought and won in every quarter 
of the world, comprising the captured flags of all the 
nations with whom the British lion has waged war siuce 
James II. 's time, — French, Dutch, East Indian, Prus- 
sian, Russian, Chinese, and American, — collected to- 
gether in this consecrated spot, not to symbolize that 
there shall be no more discord upon earth, but drooping 
over the aisle in sullen, though peaceable humiliation. 
Yes, I said "American" among the rest; for the good 
old pensioner mistook me for an Englishman, and failed 



UP THE THAMES. 285 

not to point out (and, methought, with an especial em- 
phasis of triumph) some flags that had been taken at 
Bladensburg and Washington. I fancied, indeed, that 
they hung a little higher and drooped a little lower than 
any of their companions in disgrace. It is a comfort, 
however, that their proud devices are already indistin- 
guishable, or nearly so, owing to dust and tatters and the 
kind offices of the moths, and that they will soon rot 
from the banner-staves and be swept out in unrecognized 
fragments from the chapel-door. 

It is a good method of teaching a man how imperfectly 
cosmopolitan he is, to show him his country's flag occu- 
pying a position of dishonor in a foreign land. But, in 
truth, the whole system of a people crowing over its mil- 
itary triumphs had far better be dispensed with, both on 
account of the ill-blood that it helps to keep fermenting 
among the nations, and because it operates as an accumu- 
lative inducement to future generations to aim at a kind 
of glory, the gain of which has generally proved more ruin- 
ous than its loss. I heartily wish that every trophy of 
victory might crumble away, and that every reminiscence 
or tradition of a hero, from the beginning of the world to 
this day, could pass out of all men's memories at once and 
forever. I might feel very differently, to be sure, if we 
Northerners had anything especially valuable to lose by 
the fading of those illuminated names. 

I gave the pensioner (but I am afraid there may have 
been a little affectation in it) a magnificent guerdon of all 
the silver I had in my pocket, to requite him for having 
unintentionally stirred up my patriotic susceptibilities. 
He was a meek-looking, kindly old man, with a humble 
freedom and affability of manner that made it pleasant to 
converse with him. Old soldiers, I know not why, seem 
to be more accostable than old sailors. One is apt to 



286 UP THE THAMES. 

hear a growl beneath the smoothest courtesy of the 
hitter. The mild veteran, with his peaceful voice, and 
gentle reverend aspect, told me that he had fought at a 
cannon all through the Battle of Waterloo, and escaped 
unhurt ; he had now been in the hospital four or five years, 
and was married, but necessarily underwent a separation 
from his wife, who lived outside of the gates. To my 
inquiry whether his fellow-pensioners were comfortable 
and happy, he answered, with great alacrity, "O yes, 
sir! " qualifying his evidence, after a moment's consider- 
ation, by saying in an undertone, "There are some peo- 
ple, your Honor knows, who could not be comfortable 
anywhere." I did know it, and fear that the system of 
Chelsea Hospital allows too little of that wholesome care 
and regulation of their own occupations and interests 
which might assuage the sting of life to those naturally 
uncomfortable individuals by giving them something ex- 
ternal to think about. But my old friend here was happy 
in the hospital, and by this time, very likely, is happy in 
heaven, in spite of the bloodshed that he may have 
caused by touching off a cannon at Waterloo. 

Crossing Battersea Bridge, in the neighborhood of Chel- 
sea, I remember seeing a distant gleam of the Crystal 
Palacs, glimmering afar in the afternoon sunshine like 
an imaginary structure, — an air-castls by chance de- 
scended upon earth, and resting there one instant before 
it vanished, as we sometimes see a soap-bubble touch un- 
harmed on the carpet, — a thing of only momentary visi- 
bility and no substance, destined to be overburdened and 
crushed down by the first cloud-shadow that might fall 
upon that spot. Even as I looked, it disappeared. Shall 
I attempt, a picture of this exhalation of modern inge- 
nuity, or what else shall I try to paint? Everything in 
London and its vicinity has been depicted innumerable 



UP THE THAMES. 287 

times, but never once translated into intelligible images ; 
it is an " old, old story," never yet told, nor to be told. 
While writing these reminiscences, I am continually im- 
pressed with the futility of the effort to give any creative 
truth to my sketch, so that it might produce such pictures 
in the reader's mind as would cause the original scenes 
to appear familiar when afterwards beheld. Nor have 
other writers often been more successful in representing 
definite objects prophetically to my own mind. In truth, 
I believe that the chief delight and advantage of this 
kind of literature is not for any real information that it 
supplies to untravelled people, but for reviving the recol- 
lections and reawakening the emotions of persons already 
acquainted with the scenes described. Thus I found an 
exquisite pleasure, the other day, in reading Mr. Tucker- 
man's "Month in England," — a fine example of the way 
in which a refined and cultivated American looks at the 
Old Country, the things that he naturally seeks there, 
and the modes of feeling and reflection w T hich they excite. 
Correct outlines avail little or nothing, though truth of 
coloring may be somewhat more efficacious. Impres- 
sions, however, states of mind produced by interesting 
and remarkable objects, these, if truthfully and vividly 
recorded, may work a genuine effect, and, though but 
the result of what we see, go further towards represent- 
ing the actual scene than any direct effort to paint it. 
Give the emotions that cluster about it, and, without 
being able to analyze the spell by which it is summoned 
up, you get something like a sitnulachre of the object in 
tiie midst of them. From some of the above reflections I 
draw the comfortable inference, that, the longer and bet- 
ter known a thing may be, so much the more eligible is 
it as the subject of a descriptive sketch. 

On a Sunday afternoon, I passed through a side-cn- 



288 UP THE THAMES. 

trance in the time-blackened wall of a place of worship, 
and found myself among- a congregation assembled in one 
of the transepts and the immediately contiguous portion 
of the nave. It was a vast old edifice, spacious enough, 
within the extent covered by its pillared roof and over- 
spread by its stone' pavement, to accommodate the whole 
of church-going London, and with a far wider and loftier 
concave than any hitman power of lungs could fill with 
audible prayer. Oaken benches were arranged in the 
transept, on one of which I seated myself, and joined, as 
well as I knew how, in the sacred business that was go- 
ing forward. But when it came to the sermon, the voice 
of the preacher was puny, and so were his thoughts, and 
both seemed impertinent at such a time and place, where 
he and all of us were bodily included within a sublime 
act of religion, which could be seen above and around us 
and felt beneath our feet. The structure itself was the 
worship of the devout men of long ago, miraculously pre- 
served in stone without losing an atom of its fragrance 
and fervor; it was a kind of anthem-strain that they had 
sung and poured out of the organ in centuries gone by; 
and being so grand and sweet, the Divine benevolence 
had willed it to be prolonged for the behoof of auditors 
unborn. I therefore came to the conclusion, that, in my 
individual case, it would be better and more reverent to 
let my eyes wander about the edifice than to fasten them 
anil my thoughts on the evidently uninspired mortal who 
was venturing — and felt it no venture at all — to speak 
here above his breath. 

The interior of Westminster Abbey (for the reader 
recognized it, no doubt, the moment we entered) is built 
of rich brown stone; and the whole of it — the lofty 
roof, the tall, clustered pillars, and the pointed arches — 
appears to be in consummate repair. At all points where 



UP THE THAMES. 289 



decay has laid its finger, the structure is clamped with 
iron or otherwise carefully protected; and being thus 
watched over, — whether as a place of ancient sanctity, a 
noble specimen of Gothic art, or an object of national 
in! crest and pride, — it may- reasonably be expected to 
survive for as many ages as have passed over it already. 
It was sweet to feel its venerable quietude, its long-endur- 
ing peace, and yet to observe how kindly and even cheer- 
fully it received the sunshine of to-day, which fell from 
the great windows into the fretted aisles and arches that 
laid aside somewhat of their aged gloom to welcome it. 
Sunshine always seems friendly to old abbeys, churches, 
and castles, kissing them, as it were, with a more affec- 
tionate, though still reverential familiarity, than it accords 
to edifices of later elate. A square of golden light lay on 
the sombre pavement of the nave, afar off, falling through 
the grand western entrance, the folding leaves of which 
were wide open, and afforded glimpses of people passing 
to and fro in the outer world, while we sat dimly envel- 
oped iu the solemnity of antique devotion. In the south 
transept, separated from us by the full breadth of the 
minster, there were painted glass windows of which the 
uppermost appeared to be a great orb of many-colored 
radiance, being, indeed, a cluster of saints and angels 
whose glorified bodies formed the rays of an aureole 
emanating from a cross in the midst. These windows 
are modern, but combine softness with wonderful brill- 
iancy of effect. Through the pillars and arches, I saw 
that the walls in that distant region of the edifice were 
almost wholly incrusted with marble, now grown yellow 
with time, no blank, unlettered slabs, but memorials of 
such men as their respective generations deemed wisest 
and bravest. Some of them were commemorated merely 
by inscriptions on mural tablets, others by sculptured bas- 
13 s 



290 UP THE THAMES. 

reliefs, others (once famous, but now forgotten generals 
or admirals, tbsse) by ponderous tombs that aspired to- 
wards the roof of the aisle, or partly curtained the immense 
arch of a window. These mountains of marble were 
peopled with the sisterhood of Allegory, winged trum- 
peters, and classic figures in full-bottomed wigs ; but it 
was strange to observe how the old Abbey melted all 
such absurdities into the breadth of its own grandeur, 
even magnifying itself by what would elsewhere have 
been ridiculous. Methinks it is the test of Gothic sub- 
limity to overpower the ridiculous without deigning to 
hida it; and these grotesque monuments of the last cen- 
tury answer a similar purpose with the grinning faces 
which the old architects scattered among their most sol- 
emn conceptions. 

From these distant wanderings (it was my first visit 
to Westminster Abbey, and I would gladly have taken it 
all in at a glance) my eyes came back and began to in- 
vestigate what was immediately about me in the transept. 
Close at my elbow was the pedestal of Canning's statue. 
Next beyond it was a massive tomb, on the spacious tab- 
let of which reposed tlie full-length figures of a marble 
lord and lady, whom an inscription announced to be the 
Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, — the historic Duke of 
Charles I.'s time, and the fantastic Duchess, tradition- 
ally remembered by her poems and plays. She was of a 
family, as the record on her tomb proudly informed us, 
of which all the brothers had been valiant and all the 
sisters virtuous. A recent statue of Sir John Malcolm, 
the new marble as white as snow, held the next place ; 
and near by was a mural monument and bust of Sir Peter 
Warren. The round visage of this old British admiral 
has a certain interest for a New-Englander, because it 
was by no merit of his own (though he took care to 



UP THE THAMES. 291 

assume it as such), but by tlie valor aud warlike enter- 
prise of our colonial forefathers, especially the stout men 
of Massachusetts, that he won rank and renown, and a 
tomb in Westminster Abbey. Lord Mansfield, a huge 
mass of marble done into the guise of a judicial gown 
and wig, with a stern face in the midst of the latter, sat 
on the other side of the transept; and on the pedestal 
beside him was a figure of Justice, holding forth, instead 
of the customary grocer's scales, an actual pair of brass 
steelyards. It is an ancient and classic instrument, un- 
doubtedly ; but I had supposed that Portia (when Shy- 
lock's pound of flesh was to be weighed) was the only 
judge that ever really called for it in a court of justice. 
Pitt and Fox were in the same distinguished company ; 
and John Kemble, in Roman costume, stood not far oil', 
but strangely shorn of the dignity that is said to have en- 
veloped him like a mantle in his lifetime. Perhaps the 
evanescent majesty of the stage is incompatible with 
the long endurance of marble and the solemn reality of 
the tomb ; though, on the other hand, almost every illus- 
trious personage here represented has been invested with 
more or less of stage-trickery by his sculptor. In truth, 
the artist (unless there be a divine efficacy in his touch, 
making evident a heretofore hidden dignity in the actual 
form) feels it an imperious law to remove his subject as 
far from the aspect of ordinary life as may be possible 
without sacrificing every trace of resemblance. The 
absurd effect of the contrary course is very remarkable 
in the statue of Mr. Wilberforce, whose actual self, save 
for the lack of color, I seemed to behold, seated just 
across the aisle. 

This excellent man appears to have sunk into himself 
in a sitting posture, with a thin leg crossed over his knee, 
a book in one hand, and a linger of the other under his 



292 UP THE THAMES. 

chin, I believe, or applied to the side of his nose, or to 
some equally familiar purpose ; while his exceedingly 
homely aud wrinkled face, held a little on one side, 
twinkles at you with the shrewdest complacency, as if he 
were looking right into your eyes, and twigged something 
there which you had half a mind to conceal from him. 
He keeps this look so pertinaciously that you feel it to be 
insufferably impertinent, and bethink yourself what com- 
mon ground there may be between yourself and a stone 
image, enabling you to resent it. I have no doubt that 
the statue is as like Mr. Wilberforce as one pea to an- 
other, and you might fancy, that, at some ordinary mo- 
ment, when he least expected it, and before he had time 
to smooth away his knowing complication of wrinkles, he 
had seen the Gorgon's head, and whitened into marble, — 
not only his personal self, but his coat and small-clothes, 
down to a button and the minutest crease of the cloth. 
The ludicrous result marks the impropriety of bestowing 
the age-long duration of marble upon small, characteristic 
individualities, such as might come within the province 
of waxen imagery. The sculptor should give perma- 
nence to the figure of a great man in his mood of broad 
and grand composure, which would obliterate all mean 
peculiarities ; for, if the original were unaccustomed to 
such a mood, or if his features were incapable of assum- 
ing the guise, it seems questionable whether he could 
really have been entitled to a marble immortality. In 
point of fact, however, the English nice and form are 
seldom statuesque, however illustrious the individual. 

It ill becomes me, perhaps, to have lapsed into this 
mood of half-jocose criticism in describing my first visit 
to Westminster Abbey, a spot which I had dreamed 
about more reverentially, from my childhood upward, 
than any other in the world, and which I then beheld, 



UP THE THAMES. 293 

and now look back upon, with profound gratitude to the 
men who built it, and a kindly interest, I may add, in the 
humblest personage that has contributed his little all to 
its impressiveness, by depositing his dust or his memory 
there. But it is a characteristic of this grand edifice 
that it permits you to smile as freely under the roof of 
its central nave as if you stood beneath the yet grander 
canopy of heaven. Break into laughter, if you feel in- 
clined, provided the vergers do not hear it echoing among 
the arches' In an ordinary church you would keep your 
countenance for fear of disturbing the sanctities or pro- 
prieties of the place; but you need leave no honest and 
decorous portion of your human nature outside of these 
benign and truly hospitable walls. Their mild awfulness 
will take care of itself. Thus it does no harm to the 
general impression, when you come to be sensible that 
many of the monuments are ridiculous, and commemorate 
a mob of people who are mostly forgotten in their graves, 
and few of wdiom ever deserved any better boon from 
posterity. You acknowledge the force of Sir Godfrey 
Kneller's objection to being buried in Westminster Ab- 
bey, because " they do bury fouls there ! " Nevertheless, 
these grotcscjue carvings of marble, that break out in 
dingy-white blotches on the old freestone of the interior 
walls, have come there by as natural a process as might 
cause mosses and ivy to cluster about the external edi- 
fice ; for they are the historical and biographical record 
of each successive age, written with its own hand, and 
all the truer for the inevitable mistakes, and none the 
less solemn for the occasional absurdity. Though you 
entered the Abbey expecting to see the tombs only of the 
illustrious, you are content at last to read many names, 
both in literature and history, that have now lost the rev- 
erence of mankind, if indeed they ever really possessed it. 



294 UP THE THAMES. 

Let these men rest in peace. Even if you miss a name 
or two that you hoped to find there, they may well be 
spared. It matters little a few more or less, or whether 
Westminster Abbey contains or lacks any one man's 
grave, so long as the Centuries, each with the crowd of 
personages that it deemed memorable, have chosen it as 
their place of honored sepulture, and laid themselves 
down under its pavement. The inscriptions and devices 
on the walls are rich with evidences of the, fluctuating 
tastes, fashions, manners, opinions, prejudices, follies, wis- 
doms of the past, and thus they combine into a more 
truthful memorial of their dead times than any individual 
epitaph-maker ever meant to write. 

When the services were over, many of the audience 
seemed inclined to linger in the nave or wander away 
among the mysterious aisles ; for there is nothing in this 
world so fascinating as a Gothic minster, which always 
invites you deeper and deeper into its heart both by vast 
revelations and shadowy concealments. Through the 
open-work screen that divides the nave from the chancel 
and choir, we could discern the gleam of a marvellous 
window, but were debarred from entrance into that more 
sacred precinct of the Abbey by the vergers. These vigi- 
lant officials (doing their duty all the more strenuously 
because no fees could be exacted from Sunday visitors) 
flourished their staves, and drove us towards the grand 
entrance like a flock of sheep. Lingering through one 
of the aisles, I happened to look down, and found my 
foot upon a stone inscribed with this familiar exclama- 
tion, " rare Ben Jonson ! " and remembered the story 
of stout old Ben's burial in that spot, standing upright, 
— not, I presume, on account of any unseemly reluctance 
• on his part to lie down in the dust, like other men, but 
because standing-room was all that could reasonably be 



UP THE THAMES. 295 

demanded for a poet among the slumberous notabilities 
of his age. It made me weary to think of it! — such a 
prodigious length of time to keep one's feet! — apart 
from the honor of the thing, it would certainly have been 
better for Ben to stretch himself at ease in some country 
churchyard. To this (lav, however, I fancy that there is 
a contemptuous alloy mixed up with the admiration which 
the higher classes of English society profess for their lit- 
erary men. 

Another day — in truth, many other days — I sought 
out Poets' Corner, and found a sign-board and pointed 
finger, directing tin; visitor to it, on the corner house of 
a little lane leading towards the rear of the Abbey. The 
entrance is at the southeastern end of the south transept, 
and it is used, on ordinary occasions, as the only free 
mode of access to the building. It is no spacious arch, 
but a small, lowly door, passing through which, and push- 
ing aside an inner screen that partly keeps out an exceed- 
ingly chill wind, you find yourself in a dim nook of the 
Abbey, with the busts of poets gazing at you from the 
otherwise bare stone-work of the Avails. Great poets, 
too ; for Ben Jonson is right behind the door, and Spen- 
ser's tablet is next, and Butler's on the same side of the 
transept, and Milton's (whose bust you know at once by 
its resemblance to one of his portraits, though older, more 
wrinkled, and sadder than that) is close by, and a pro- 
file-medallion of Gray beneath it. A window high aloft 
sheds down a dusky daylight on these and many other 
sculptured marbles, now as yellow as old parchment, that 
cover the three walls of the nook up to api elevation of 
about twenty feet above the pavement. It seemed to me 
that I had always been familiar with the spot. Enjoying 
a humble intimacy — and how much of my life had else 
been a dreary solitude! — with many of its inhabitants, 



296 UP THE THAMES. 

I could not feel myself a stranger there. It was delight- 
ful to be among them. There was a genial awe, mingled 
with a sense of kind and friendly presences about me ; 
and I was glad, moreover, at finding so many of them 
there together, in fit companionship, mutually recognized 
and duly honored, all reconciled now, whatever distant 
generations, whatever personal hostility or other miser- 
able impediment, had divided them far asunder while they 
lived. I have never felt a similar interest in any other 
tombstones, nor have I ever been deeply moved by the 
imaginary presence of other famous dead people. A 
poet's ghost is the only one that survives for his fellow- 
mortals, after his bones are in the dust, — and he not 
ghostly, but cherishing many hearts with his own warmth 
in the dullest atmosphere of life. What other fame is 
worth aspiring for ? Or, let me speak it more boldly, 
what other long-enduring fame can exist? We neither 
remember nor care anything for the past, except as the 
.poet has made it intelligibly noble and sublime to our 
comprehension. The shades of the mighty have no sub- 
stance ; they flit ineffectually about the darkened stage 
where they- performed their momentary parts, save when 
the poet has thrown his own creative soul into them, and 
imparted a more vivid life than ever they were able to 
manifest to mankind while they dwelt in the body. And 
therefore — though he cunningly disguises himself in their 
armor, their robes of state, or kingly purple — it is not 
the statesman, the warrior, or the monarch that survives, 
but the despised poet, whom they may have fed with their 
crumbs, and to whom they owe all that they now are or 
have, — a name ! 

In the foreg »ing paragraph I seem to have been be- 
trayed into a flight above or beyond the customary level 
that best agrees with me ; but it represents fairly enough 



UP THE THAMES. 297 

ilie emotions with which I passed from Poets' Corner into 
the chapels, which contain the sepulchres of kings and 
great people. They are magnificent even now, and must 
have been inconceivably so when the marble slabs and 
pillars wore their new polish, and the statues retained 
the brilliant colors with which they were originally 
painted, and the shrines their rich gilding, of which the 
sunlight still shows a glimmer or a streak, though the 
sunbeam itself looks tarnished with antique dust. Yet 
this recondite portion of the Abbey presents few memo- 
rials of personages whom we care to remember. The 
shrine of Edward the Confessor has a certain interest, 
because it was so long held in religious reverence, and 
because the very dust that settled upon it was formerly 
worth gold. The helmet and war-saddle of Henry V., 
worn at Agincourt, and now suspended above his tomb, 
are memorable objects, but more for Shakespeare's sake 
than the victor's own. Rank has been the general pass- 
port to admission here. Noble and regal dust is as cheap 
as dirt under the pavement. I am glad to recollect, 
indeed (and it is too characteristic of the right English 
spirit not to be mentioned), one or two gigantic statues 
of great mechanicians, who contributed largely to the ma- 
terial welfare of England, sitting familiarly in their mar- 
ble chairs among forgotten kings and queens. Otherwise, 
the quaintness of the earlier monuments, and the antique 
beauty of some of them, are what chiefly gives them 
value. Nevertheless, Addison is buried among the men 
of rank ; not on the plea of his literary fame, however, 
but because he was connected with nobility by marriage, 
and had been a Secretary of State. His gravestone is 
inscribed with a resounding verse from Tickell's lines to 
his memory, the only lines by which Tickell himself is 
now remembered, and which (as I discovered a little 
13* 



298 UP THE THAMES. 

while ago) lie mainly filched from an obscure versifier of 
somewhat earlier date. 

Returning to Poets' Corner, I looked again at the walls, 
and wondered how the requisite hospitality can be shown to 
poets of our own and the succeeding ages. There is hardly 
a foot of space left, although room has lately been found 
for a bust of Southey and a full-length statue of Camp- 
bell. At best, only a little portion of the Abbey is dedicated 
to poets, literary men, musical composers, and others of 
the gentle artist breed, and even into that small nook of 
sanctity men of other pursuits have thought it decent to 
intrude themselves. Methinks the tuneful throng, being 
at home here, should recollect how they were treated in 
their lifetime, and turn the cold shoulder, looking askance 
at nobles and official personages, however worthy of 
honorable interment elsewhere. Yet it shows aptly and 
truly enough what portion of the world's regard and 
honor has heretofore been awarded to literary eminence 
in comparison with other modes of greatness, — this 
dimly lighted corner (nor even that quietly to themselves) 
in the vast minster, the walls of which are sheathed and 
hidden under marble that has been wasted upon the 
illustrious obscure. Nevertheless, it may not be worth 
while to quarrel with the world on this account ; for, to 
confess the very truth, their own little nook contains 
more than one poet whose memory is kept alive by his 
monument, instead of imbuing the senseless stone with a 
spiritual immortality, — men of whom you do not ask, 
" Where is he ? " but, " Why is he here ?" I estimate that 
all the literary people who really make an essential part 
of one's inner life, including the period since English 
literature first existed, might have ample elbow-room to 
sit down and quaff their draughts of Casialy round 
Chaucer's broad, horizontal tombstone. These divinest 



UP THE THAMES. 299 

poets consecrate the spot, and throw a reflected glory 
over the humblest of their companions. And as for the 
hitter, it is to be hoped that they may have long outgrown 
the characteristic jealousies and morbid sensibilities of 
their craft, and have found out the little value (probably 
not amounting to sixpence in immortal currency) of the 
posthumous renown which they once aspired to win. It 
would be a poor compliment to a dead poet to fancy him 
leaning out of the sky and snuffing- up the impure breath 
of earthly praise. 

Yet we cannot easily rid ourselves of the notion that 
those who have bequeathed us the inheritance of an un- 
dying song would fain be conscious of its endless rever- 
berations in the hearts of mankind, and would delight, 
among sublimer enjoyments, to see their names embla- 
zoned in such a treasure-place of great memories as West- 
minster Abbey. There are some men, at all events, — 
true and tender poets, moreover, and fully deserving of 
the honor, — whose spirits, I feel certain, would linger a 
little while about Poets' Corner for the sake of witness- 
ing their own apotheosis among their kindred. They have 
had a strong natural yearning, not so much for applause 
as sympathy, which the cold fortune of their lifetime did 
but scantily supply ; so that this unsatisfied appetite may 
make itself felt upon sensibilities at once so delicate and 
retentive, even a step or two beyond the grave. Leigh 
Hunt, for example, would be pleased, even now, if he 
could learn that his bust had been reposited in the midst 
of the old poets whom he admired and loved ; though 
there is hardly a man among the authors of to-day and 
yesterday whom the judgment of Englishmen would be 
less likely to 'place there. He deserves it, however, if 
not for his verse (the value of which I do not estimate, 
never having been able to read it), yet for his delightful 



300 UP THE THAMES. 

prose, his unmeasured poetry, the inscrutable happiness 
of his touch, working soft miracles by a life-process like 
the growth of grass and flowers. As with all such gentle 
writers, his page- sometimes betrayed a vestige of ait'ecta- 
tion, but, the next moment, a rich, natural luxuriance 
overgrew and buried it out of sight. I knew him a little, 
and (since, Heaven be praised, few English celebrities 
whom I chanced to meet have enfranchised my pen by 
their decease, and as I assume no liberties with living 
men) I will conclude this rambling article by sketching 
my first interview with Leigh Hunt. 

He was then at Hammersmith, occupying a very plain 
and shabby little house, in a contiguous range of others 
like it, with no prospect but that of an ugly village street, 
and certainly nothing to gratify his craving for a tasteful 
environment, inside or out. A slatternly maid-servant 
opened the door for us, and he himself stood in the entry, 
a beautiful and venerable old man, buttoned to the chin 
in a black dress-coat, tall and slender, with a countenance 
quietly alive all over, and the gentlest and most naturally 
courteous manner. He ushered us into-his little study, or 
parlor, or both, — a very forlorn room, with poor paper- 
hangings and carpet, few books, no pictures that I remem- 
ber, and an awful lack of upholstery. I touch distinctly 
upon these external blemishes and this nudity of adorn- 
ment, not that they would be worth mentioning in a sketch 
of other remarkable persons, but because Leigh Hunt 
was born with such a faculty of enjoying all beautiful 
things that it seemed as if Fortune did him as much 
wrong in not supplying them as in withholding a suffi- 
ciency of vital breath from ordinary men. All kinds of 
mild magnificence, tempered by his taste, would have 
become him well ; but he had not the grim dignity that 
assumes nakedness as the better robe. 



UP THE THAMES. 301 

I have said that he was a beautiful old man. In truth, 
I never saw a finer countenance, either as to the mould 
of features or the expression, nor any that showed the 
play of feeling so perfectly without the slightest theatrical 
emphasis. It was like a child's face in this respect. At 
my first glimpse of him, when he met us in the entry, I 
discerned that he was old, his long hair being white and 
his wrinkles many ; it was an aged visage, in short, such 
as I had not at all expected to see, in spite of dates, 
because his books talk to the reader with the tender 
vivacity of youth. But when he began to speak, and as 
lie grew more earnest in conversation, I ceased to be 
sensible of his age ; sometimes, indeed, its dusky shadow 
darkened through the gleam which his sprightly thoughts 
diifused about his face, but then another flash of youth 
came out of his eyes and made an illumination again. I 
never witnessed such a wonderfully illusive transforma- 
tion, before or since; and, to this day, trusting only to 
my recollection, I should find it difficult to decide which 
was his genuine and stable predicament, — youth or age. 
I have met no Englishman whose manners seemed to me 
so agreeable, soft, rather than polished, wholly uncon- 
ventional, the natural growth of a kindly and sensitive 
disposition without any reference to rule, or else obedi- 
ent to some rule so subtile that the nicest observer could 
not detect the application of it. 

His eyes were dark and very fine, and his delightful 
voice accompanied their visible language like music. He 
appeared to be exceedingly appreciative of whatever was 
passing among those who surrounded him, and especially 
of the vicissitudes in the consciousness of the person to 
whom he happened to be addressing himself at the mo- 
ment. I felt that no effect upon my mind of what he 
uttered, no emotion, however transitory, in myself, es- 



302 UP THE THAMES. 

coped his notice, though not from any positive vigilance 
on his part, but because his faculty of observation was so 
penetrative aud delicate; and to say the truth, it a little 
confused me to discern always a ripple on his mobile face, 
responsive to any slightest breeze that passed over the 
inner reservoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence to 
extend to a similar reservoir within himself. On matters 
of feeling, and within a certain depth, you might spare 
vourself the trouble of utterance, because he already 
knew what you wanted to say, and perhaps a little more 
than you would have spoken. His figure was full of 
gentle movement, though, somehow, without disturbing 
its quietude ; and as he talked, he kept folding his hands 
nervously, aud betokened in many ways a fine aud imme- 
diate sensibility, quick to feel pleasure or pain, though 
scarcely capable, I should imagine, of a passionate expe- 
rience in either direction. There was not an English 
trait in him from head to foot, morally, intellectually, or 
physically. Beef, ale, or stout, brandy or port-wine, en- 
tered not at all into his composition. In his earlier life, 
he appears to have given evidences of courage and sturdy 
principle, aud of a tendency to fling himself into the 
rough struggle of humanity on the liberal side. It would 
be taking too much upon myself to affirm that this was 
merely a projection of his faucy world into the actual, 
and that he never could have hit a downright blow, and 
was altogether an unsuitable person to receive one. I 
beheld him not in his armor, but in his peacefulest robes. 
Nevertheless, drawing my conclusion merely from what 
I saw, it would have occurred to me that his main defi- 
ciency was a lack of grit. Though anything but a timid 
man, the combative and defensive elements were not 
prominently developed in his character, and could have 
been made available only when lie put an unnatural force 



UP THE THAMES. 303 

upon his instincts. It was on this account, and also 
because of the fineness of his nature generally, that the 
English appreciated him no better, and left this sweet 
and delicate poet poor, and with scanty laurels in his 
declining age. 

It was not, I think, from his American blood that 
Leigh Hunt derived either his amiability or his peaceful 
inclinations ; at least, I do not see how we can reason- 
ably claim the former quality as a national characteristic, 
though the latter might have been fairly inherited from 
his ancestors on the mother's side, who were Pennsylvania 
Quakers. But the kind of excellence that distinguished 
him — his fineness, subtilty, and grace — was that which 
the richest cultivation has heretofore tended to develop 
in the happier examples of American genius, and which 
(though I say it a little reluctantly) is perhaps what our 
future intellectual advancement may make general among 
us. His person, at all events, was thoroughly American, 
and of the best type, as were likewise his manners ; for 
we are the best as well as the worst mannered people in 
the world. 

Leigh Hunt loved dearly to be praised. That is to 
say, lie desired sympathy as a flower seeks sunshine, and 
perhaps profited by it as much in the richer depth of 
coloring that it imparted to his ideas. In response to all 
that we ventured to express about his writings (and, for 
my part, I went quite to the extent of my conscience, 
which was a long way, and there left the matter to a 
lady and a young girl, who happily were with me), his 
face shone, and he manifested great delight, with a per- 
fect, and yet delicate, frankness for which I loved him. 
He could not tell us, he said, the happiness that such 
appreciation gave him ; it always took him by surprise, 
he remarked, for — perhaps because he cleaned his own 



304 UP THE THAMES. 

boots, and performed other little ordinary offices for 
himself — he never had been conscious of anything won- 
derful in his own person. And then he smiled, making 
himself and all the poor little parlor about him beautiful 
thereby. It is usually the hardest thing in the world to 
praise a man to his face ; but Leigh Hunt received the 
incense with such gracious satisfaction (feeling it to be 
sympathy, not vulgar praise), that the only difficulty was 
to keep the enthusiasm of the moment within the limit 
of permanent opinion. A storm had suddenly come up 
while we were talking; the rain poured, the lightning 
flashed, and the thunder broke; but I hope, and have 
great pleasure in believing, that it was a sunny hour for 
Leigh Hunt. Nevertheless, it was not to my voice that 
he most favorably inclined his ear, but to those of my 
companions. Women are the fit ministers at such a 
shrine. 

He must have suffered keenly in his lifetime, and 
enjoyed keenly, keeping his emotions so much upon the 
surface as he seemed to do, and convenient for everybody 
to play upon. Baing of a cheerful temperament, happi- 
ness had probably the upperhand. His was a light, 
mildly joyous nature, gentle, graceful, yet seldom attain- 
ing to that deepest grace which results from power; for 
beauty, like woman, its human representative, dallies 
with the gentle, but yields its consummate favor only to 
the strong. I imagine that Leigh Hunt may have been 
more beautiful when I met him, both in person and 
character, than in his earlier days. As a young man, 
I could conceive of his being finical in certain moods, 
but not now, when the gravity of age shed a venerable 
grace about him. I rejoiced to hear him say that he 
was favored with most confident and cheering anticipa- 
tions in respect to a future life; and there were abun- 



UP THE THAMES. 305 

dant proofs, throughout our interview, of an unrepining 
spirit, resignation, quiet relinquishment of the worldly 
benefits that were denied him, thankful enjoyment of 
whatever lie had to enjoy, and piety, and hope shining 
onward into the dusk, — all of which gave a reverential 
cast to the feeling with which we parted from him. I 
wish that he could have had one full draught of pros- 
perity before he died. As a matter of artistic propriety, 
it would have been delightful to see him inhabiting a 
beautiful house of his own, in an Italian climate, with all 
sorts of elaborate upholstery and minute elegances about 
him, and a succession of tender and lovely women to 
praise his sweet poetry from morning to night, I hardly 
know whether it is my fault, or the effect of a weakness 
in Leigh Hunt's character, that I should be sensible 
of a regret of this nature, when, at the same time, I 
sincerely believe that he has found an infinity of better 
things in the world whither he has gone. 

At our leave-taking he grasped me warmly by both 
hands, and seemed as much interested in our whole party 
as if he had known us for years. All this was genuine 
feeling, a quick, luxuriant growth out of his heart, which 
was a soil for flower-seeds of rich and rare varieties, not 
acorns, but a true heart, nevertheless. Several years 
afterwards I met him for the last time at a London din- 
ner-party, looking sadly broken down by infirmities ; and 
my final recollection of the beautiful old man presents 
him arm in arm with, nay, if I mistake not, partly em- 
braced and supported by, another beloved and honored 
poet, whose minstrel-name, since he has a week-day one 
for his personal occasions, I will venture to speak. It 
was Barry Cornwall, whose kind introduction had first 
made me known to Leigh Hunt. 

T 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OP ENGLISH 
POVERTY. 




ECOMING an inhabitant of a great English 
town, I often turned aside from the prosperous 
thoroughfares (where the edifices, the shops, 
and the bustling crowd differed not so much from scenes 
with which I was familiar in my own country), and went 
designedly astray among precincts that reminded me of 
some of Dickens's grimiest pages. There I caught 
glimpses of a people and a mode of life that were com- 
paratively new to my observation, a sort of sombre phan- 
tasmagoric spectacle, exceedingly undelightful to behold, 
yet involving a siugular interest and even fascination in 
its ugliness. 

Dirt, one would fancy, is plenty enough all over the 
world, being the symbolic accompaniment of the foul 
incrustation which began to settle over and bedim all 
earthly things as soon as Eve had bitten the apple ; ever 
since which hapless epoch, her daughters have chiefly 
been engaged in a desperate and unavailing struggle to 
get rid of it. But the dirt of a poverty-stricken English 
street is a monstrosity unknown on our side of the At- 
lantic. It reigns supreme within its own limits, and is 
inconceivable everywhere beyond them. We enjoy the 
great advantage, that the brightness and dryness of our 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 307 

atmosphere keep everything clean that the sun shines 
upon, converting the larger portion of our impurities 
into transitory dust which the next wiud can sweep away, 
in contrast with the damp, adhesive grime that incorpo- 
rates itself with all surfaces (unless continually and pain- 
fully cleansed) in the chill moisture of the English air. 
Then the all-pervading smoke of the city, abundantly in- 
termingled with the sable snow-flakes of bituminous coal, 
hovering Overhead, descending, and alighting on pave- 
ments and rich architectural fronts, on the snowy muslin 
of the ladies, and the gentlemen's starched collars and 
shirt-bosoms, invests even the better streets in a half- 
mourning garb. It is beyond the resources of Wealth 
to keep the smut away from its premises or its own lin- 
gers' ends ; and as for Poverty, it surrenders itself to the 
dark influence without a struggle. Along with disastrous 
circumstances, pinching need, adversity so lengthened out 
as to constitute the rule of life, there conies a certain 
chill depression of the spirits which seems especially to 
shudder at cold water. In view of so wretched a state 
of things, we accept the ancient Deluge not merely as 
an insulated phenomenon, but as a periodical necessity, 
and acknowledge that nothing less than such a general 
washing-day could suffice to cleanse the slovenly old 
world of its moral and material dirt. 

Gin-shops, or what the English call spirit-vaults, are 
numerous in the vicinity of these poor streets, and are set 
off with the magnificence of gilded door-posts, tarnished 
by contact with the unclean customers who haunt there. 
Ragged children come thither with old shaving-mugs, or 
broken-nosed teapots, or any such makeshift receptacle, 
to get a little poison or madness for their parents, who 
deserve no better requital at their hands for having en- 
gendered them. Inconceivabh sluttish women enter at 



308 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OE ENGLISH POVERTY. 

noonday and stand at the counter among boon-compan- 
ions of both sexes, stirring up misery and jollity in a 
bumper together, and quaffing off the mixture with a 
relish. As for the men, they lounge there continually, 
drinking till they are drunken, — drinking as long as they 
have a half-penny left, and then, as it seemed to me, wait- 
ing for a sixpenny miracle to be wrought in their pockets 
so as to enable them to be drunken again. Most of 
these establishments have a significant advertisement of 
"Beds," doubtless for the accommodation of their cus- 
tomers in the interval between one intoxication and the 
next. I never could find it in my heart, however, utter- 
ly to condemn these sad revellers, and should certainly 
wait till I had some better consolation to offer before 
depriving them of their dram of gin, though death itself 
were in the glass; for methought their poor souls needed 
such fiery stimulant to lift them a little way out of the 
smothering squalor of both their outward and interior life, 
giving them glimpses and suggestions, even if bewildering 
ones, of a spiritual existence that limited their present 
misery. The temperance-reformers unquestionably derive 
their commission from the Divine Beneficence, but have 
never been taken fully into its counsels. All may not be 
lost, though those good men fail. 

Pawnbrokers' establishments, distinguished by the 
mystic symbol of the three golden balls, were conven- 
iently accessible; though what personal property these 
wretched people could possess, capable of being estimated 
in silver or copper, so as to afford a basis for a loan, was 
a problem that still perplexes me. Old clothesmen, like- 
wise, dwelt hard by, and hung out ancient garments to 
dangle in the wind. There were butchers' shops, too, of 
a class adapted to the neighborhood, presenting no such 
generously fattened carcases as Englishmen love to gaze 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 309 

at in the market, no stupendous halves of mighty beeves, 
no dead hogs or muttons ornamented with carved bas- 
reliefs of fat on their ribs and shoulders, in a peculiarly 
British style of art, — not these, but bits and gobbets of 
lean meat, selvages snipt off from steaks, tough and 
stringy morsels, bare bones smitten away from joints by 
the cleaver, tripe, liver, bullocks' feet, or whatever else 
was cheapest and divisible into the smallest lots. I am 
afraid that even such delicacies came to many of their 
tables hardly oftener than Christmas. In the windows 
of other little shops you saw half a dozen wizened her- 
rings, some eggs in a basket, looking so dingily antique 
that your imagination smelt them, fly-speckled biscuits, 
segments of a hungry cheese, pipes and papers of tobacco. 
Now and then a sturdy milk-woman passed by with a 
wooden yoke over her shoulders, supporting a pail on 
either side, filled with a whitish fluid, the composition of 
which was water and chalk and the milk of a sickly cow, 
who gave the best she had, poor thing ! but could scarce- 
ly make it rich or wholesome, spending her life in some 
close city-nook and pasturing on strange food. I have 
seen, once or twice, a donkey coming into one of these 
streets with panniers full of vegetables, and departing 
with a return cargo of what looked like rubbish and 
street-sweepings. No other commerce seemed to exist, 
except, possibly, a girl might offer you a pair of stockings 
or a worked collar, or a man whisper something mysteri- 
ous about wonderfully cheap cigars. And yet 1 remem- 
ber seeing female hucksters in those regions, with their 
wares on the edge of the sidewalk and their own seats 
right in the carriage-way, pretending to sell half-decayed 
oranges and apples, toffy, Orniskirk cakes, combs, and 
cheap jewelry, the coarsest kind of crockery, and little, 
plates of oysters, — knitting patiently all day long, and 



310 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

removing their undiminished stock in trade at night fall. 
All indispensable importations from other quarters of the 
town were on a remarkably diminutive scale : for exam- 
ple, the wealthier inhabitants purchased their coal by 
the wheelbarrow-load, and the poorer ones by the peck- 
measure. It was a curious and melancholy spectacle, 
when an overladen coal-cart happened to pass through 
the street and drop a handful or two of its burden in the 
mud, to see half a dozen women and children scrambling 
for the treasure-trove, like a flock of hens and chickens 
gobbling up some spilt corn. In this connection I may 
as well mention a commodity of boiled snails (for such they 
appeared to me, though probably a marine production) 
which used to be peddled from door to door, piping hot, 
as an article of cheap nutriment. 

The population of these dismal abodes appeared to 
consider the sidewalks and middle of the street as their 
common hall. In a drama of low life, the unity of place 
might be arranged rigidly according to the classic rule, 
and the street be the one locality in which every scene 
and incident should occur. Courtship, quarrels, plot and 
counterplot, conspiracies for robbery and murder, family 
difficulties or agreements, — all such matters, I doubt not, 
are constantly discussed or transacted in this sky-roofed 
saloon, so regally hung with its sombre canopy of coal- 
smoke. Whatever the disadvantages of the English cli- 
mate, the only comfortable or wholesome part of life, 
for the city poor, must be spent in the open air. The 
stifled and squalid rooms where they lie clown at night, 
whole families and neighborhoods together, or sulkily 
elbow one another in the daytime, when a settled rain 
drives them within doors, are worse horrors than it is 
worth while (without a practical object iu view) to admit 
into one's imagination. No wonder that they creep forth 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 311 

from the foul mystery of their interiors, stumble down 
from their garrets, or scramble up out of their cellars, on 
the upper step of which you may see the grimy house- 
wife, before the shower is ended, letting the raindrops 
gutter down her visage ; while her children (an impish 
progeny of cavernous recesses below the common sphere 
of humanity) swarm into the daylight and attain all that 
they know of personal purification in the nearest mud- 
puddle. It might almost make a man doubt the existence 
of his own soul, to observe how Nature has flung these 
little wretches into the street and left them there, so 
evidently regarding them as nothing worth, and how all 
mankind acquiesce in the great mother's estimate of her 
offspring. For, if they are to have no immortality, what 
superior claim can I assert for mine ? And how difficult 
to believe that anything so precious as a germ of immor- 
tal growth can have been buried under this dirt-heap, 
plunged into this cesspool of misery and vice ! As often 
as I beheld the scene, it affected me w r ith surprise and 
loathsome interest, much resembling, though in a far 
intenser degree, the feeling with which, when a boy, I 
used to turn over a plank or an old log that had long lain 
on the damp ground, and found a vivacious multitude of 
unclean and devilish-looking insects scampering to ami 
fro beneath it. Without an infinite faith, there seemed 
as much prospect of a blessed futurity for those hideous 
bugs and many-footed worms as for these brethren of our 
humanity and co-heirs of all our heavenly inheritance. 
Ah, what a mystery! Slowly, slowly, as after groping 
at the bottom of a deep, noisome, stagnant pool, my hope 
struggles upward to the surface, bearing the half-drowned 
body of a child along with it, and heaving it aloft for its 
life, and my own life, and all our lives. Unless these 
slime-clogged nostrils can be made capable of inhaling 



313 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

celestial air, I know not Low the purest and most intel- 
lectual of us can reasonably expect ever to taste a breath 
of it. The whole question of eternity is staked there. 
If a single one of those helpless little ones be lost, the 
world is lost ! 

The women and children greatly preponderate in such 
places; the men probably wandering abroad in quest of 
that daily miracle, a dinner and a drink, or perhaps slum- 
beuing in the daylight that they may the better follow out 
their cat-like rambles through the dark. Here are women 
with young figures, but old, wrinkled, yellow faces, tanned 
and blear-eyed with the smoke winch they cannot spare 
from their scanty fires, — it being too precious for its 
warmth to 1)3 swallowed by the chimney. Some of them 
sit on the doorsteps, nursing their unwashed babies at 
bosoms which we will glance aside from, for the sake of 
our mothers and all womanhood, because the fairest spec- 
tacle is here the foulest. Yet motherhood, in these dark 
abodes, is strangely identical with what we have all 
known it to be in the happiest homes. Nothing, as I re- 
member, smote me with more grief and pity (all the more 
poignant because perpbxiugly entangled with an inclina- 
tion to smile) than to hear a gaunt and ragged mother 
priding herself on the pretty ways of her ragged and 
skinny infant, just as a young matron might, when she 
invites her lady friends to admire her plump, white-robed 
darling in the nursery. Indeed, no womanly character- 
istic seemed to have altogether perished out of these poor 
souls. It was the very same creature whose tender tor- 
ments make the rapture of our young days, whom we 
love, cherish, and protect, and rely upon in life and death, 
and whom we delight to see beautify her beauty with rich 
robes and set it oil' with jewels, though now fantastically 
masquerading in a garb of tatters, wholly unfit for her to 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 313 

handle. I recognized her, over and over again, in the 
groups round a doorstep or in the descent of a cellar, 
chatting with prodigious earnestness about intangible 
trifles, laughing for a little jest, sympathizing at almost 
the same instant with one neighbor's sunshine and an- 
other's shadow, wise, simple, sly, and patient, yet easily 
perturbed, and breaking into small feminine ebullitions 
of spite, wrath, and jealousy, tornadoes of a moment, 
such as vary the social atmosphere of her silken-skirted 
sisters, though smothered into propriety by dint of a well- 
bred habit. Not that there was an absolute deficiency of 
good-breeding, even here. It often surprised me to wit- 
ness a courtesy and deference among these ragged folks, 
which, having seen it, I did not thoroughly believe in, 
wondering whence it should have come. I am persuaded, 
however, that there were laws of intercourse which they 
never violated, —a code of the cellar, the garret, the 
common staircase, the doorstep, and the pavement, which 
perhaps had as deep a foundation in natural fitness as the 
code of the drawing-room. 

Yet again I doubt whether I may not have been utter- 
ing folly in the last two sentences, when I reflect how 
rude and rough these specimens of feminine character 
generally were. They had a readiness with their hands 
that reminded me of Molly Seagrim and other heroines 
in Fielding's novels. For example, I have seen a woman 
meet a man in the street, and, for no reason perceptible 
to me, suddenly clutch him by the hair and cuff his ears, 
■ — an infliction which he bore with exemplary patience, 
only snatching the very earliest opportunity to take to his 
heels. Where a sharp tongue will not serve the purpose, 
they trust to the sharpness of their finger-nails, or in- 
carnate a whole vocabulary of vituperative words in a 
resounding slap, or the downright blow of a doubled fist. 
14 



311 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

All English people, I imagine, are influenced in a far 
greater degree than ourselves by this simple and honest 
tendency, in cases of disagreement, to batter one another's 
persons ; and whoever has seen a crowd of English ladies 
(for instance, at the door of the Sistine Chapel, in Holy 
Week) will be satisfied that their belligerent propensities 
are kept in abeyance only by a merciless rigor on the 
part of society. It requires a vast deal of refinement to 
spiritualize their large physical endowments. Such be- 
ing the case with the delicate ornaments of the drawing- 
room, it is the less to be wondered at that women who 
live mostly in the open air, amid the coarsest kind of 
companionship and occupation, should carry on the inter- 
course of life with a freedom unknown to any class of 
American females, though still, I am resolved to think, 
compatible with a generous breadth of natural propriety. 
It shocked me, at first, to see them (of all ages, even 
elderly, as well as infants that could just toddle across the 
street alone) going about in the mud and mire, or through 
the dusky snow and slosh of a severe week in winter, 
with petticoats high uplifted above bare, red feet and 
legs ; but I was comforted by observing that both shoes 
and stockings generally reappeared with better weather, 
having been thriftily kept out of the damp for the con- 
venience of dry feet within doors. Their hardihood was 
wonderful, and their strength greater than could have 
been expected from such spare diet as they probably lived 
upon. I have seen them carrying on their heads great 
burdens under which they walked as freely as if they 
were fashionable bonnets ; or sometimes the burden was 
huge enough almost to cover the whole person, looked at 
from behind,— as in Tuscan villages you may see the 
girls coming in from the country with great bundles of 
green twigs upon their backs, so that they resemble loco- 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OP ENGLISH POVERTY. 315 

motive masses of verdure and fragrance. But these poor 
English women seemed to he laden with rubbish, incon- 
gruous and indescribable, such as bones and rags, the 
sweepings of the house and of the street, a merchandise 
gathered up from what poverty itself had thrown away, 
a heap of filthy stuff analogous to Christian's bundle of 
sin. 

Sometimes, though very seldom, I detected a certain 
gracefulness among the younger women that was alto- 
gether new to my observation. It was a charm proper 
to the lowest class. One girl I particularly remember, in 
a garb none of the cleanest and nowise smart, and her- 
self exceedingly coarse in all respects, but yet endowed 
with a sort of witchery, a native charm, a robe of simple 
beauty and suitable behavior that she was born in and 
had never been tempted to throw off, because she had 
really nothing else to put on. Eve herself could not 
have been more natural. Nothing was affected, nothing 
imitated ; no proper grace was vulgarized by an effort to 
assume the manners or adornments of another sphere. 
This kind of beauty, arrayed in a fitness of its own, is 
probably vanishing out of the world, and will certainly 
never be found in America, where all the girls, whether 
daughters of the upper-tendom, the mediocrity, the cot- 
tage, or the kennel, aim at one standard of dress and 
deportment, seldom accomplishing a perfectly triumphant 
hit or an utterly absurd failure. Those words, " genteel " 
and "ladylike," are terrible ones and do us infinite 
mischief, but it is because (at least, I hope so) we are 
in a transition state, and shall emerge into a higher 
mode of simplicity than has ever been known to past 
ages. 

In such disastrous circumstances as I have been at- 
tempting to describe, it was beautiful to observe what a 



316 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

mysterious efficacy still asserted itself in character. A 
woman, evidently poor as the poorest of her neighbors, 
would be knitting or sewing on the doorstep, just as fifty 
other women were ; but round about her skirts (though 
wofully patched) you would be sensible of a certain 
sphere of decency, which, it seemed to me, could not 
have been kept more impregnable in the cosiest little 
sitting-room, -where the teakettle on the hob was hum- 
ming its good old song of domestic peace. Maidenhood 
had a similar power. The evil habit that grows upon us 
in this harsh world makes me faithless to my own better 
perceptions; and yet I have seen girls in these wretched 
streets, on whose virgin purity, judging merely from their 
impression on my instincts as they passed by, I should 
have deemed it safe, at the moment, to stake my life. 
The next moment, however, as the surrounding flood of 
moral uncleanness surged over their footsteps, I would 
not have staked a spike of thistle-down on the same 
wager. Yet the miracle was within the scope of Provi- 
dence, which is equally wise and equally beneficent (even 
to those poor girls, though I acknowledge the fact with- 
out the remotest comprehension of the mode of it), 
whether they were pure or what we fellow-sinners call 
vile. Unless your faith be deep-rooted and of most vig- 
orous growth, it is the safer way not. to turn aside into 
this region so suggestive of miserable doubt. It was a 
place " with dreadful faces thronged," wrinkled and grim 
with vice and wretchedness; and, thinking over the line 
of Milton here quoted, I come to the conclusion that 
those ugly lineaments which startled Adam and Eve, as 
they looked backward to the closed gate of Paradise, 
were no fiends from the pit, but the more terrible fore- 
shadowings of what so many of their descendants were to 
be. God help them, and us likewise, their brethren and 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 317 

sisters ! Let me add, that, forlorn, ragged, careworn, 
hopeless, dirty, haggard, hungry, as they were, the most 
pitiful thing of all was to see the sort of patience with 
which they accepted their lot, as if they had been born 
into the world for that and nothing else. Even the little 
children had this characteristic in as perfect development 
as their grandmothers. 

The children, in truth, were the ill-omened blossoms 
from which another harvest of precisely such dark fruitage 
as I saw ripened around me was to»be produced. Of 
course you would imagine these to be lumps of crude 
iniquity, tiny vessels as full as 1 lie y could hold of naugh- 
tiness ; nor can I say a great deal to the contrary. Small 
proof of parental discipline could I discern, save when a 
mother (drunken, I sincerely hope) snatched her own imp 
out of a group of pale, half-naked, humor-eaten abortions 
that were playing and squabbling together in the mud, 
turned up its tatters, brought down her heavy hand on its 
poor little tenderest part, and let it go ngaiu with a shake. 
If the child knew what the punishment was for, it was 
wiser than I pretend to be. It yelled, and went back to 
its playmates in the mud. Yet let me bear testimony to 
what was beautiful, and more touching than anything 
that I ever witnessed m the intercourse of happier chil- 
dren. I allude to the superintendence which some of 
these small people (too small, one Mould think, to be sent 
into the street alone, had there been any other nursery 
for them) exercised over still smaller ones. Whence they 
derived such a sense of duty, unless immediately from 
God, I cannot tell; but it was wonderful to observe the 
expression of responsibility in their deportment, the anx- 
ious fidelity with which they discharged their unfit office, 
the tender patience with which they linked their less 
pliable impulses to the wayward footsteps of an infant, 



318 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

and let it guide them whithersoever it liked. In the 
hollow-cheeked, large-eyed girl of ten, whom I saw giving 
a eh erless oversight to her baby -brother, I did not so 
much marvel at it. She had merely come a little earlier 
than usual to the perception of what was to be her busi- 
ness in life. But I admired the sickly-looking little boy, 
who did violence to his boyish nature by making himself 
the servant of his little sister, — she too small to walk, 
and he too small to take her in his arms, — and therefore 
working a kind of *niracle to transport her from one dirt- 
heap to another. Beholding such works of love and duty, 
I took heart again, and deemed it not so impossible, after 
all, for these neglected, children to find a path through 
the squalor and evil of their circumstances up to the gate 
of heaven. Perhaps there was this latent good in all of 
them, though generally they looked brutish, and dull 
even in their sports ; there was little mirth among them, 
nor even a fully awakened spirit of blackguardism. Yet 
sometimes, again, I saw. with surprise and a sense as if 
I had been asleep and dreaming, the bright, intelligent, 
merry lace of a child whose dark eyes gleamed with 
vivacious expression through the dirt that incrusted its 
skin, like sunshine struggling through a very dusty 
window-pane. 

In these streets the belted and blue-coated policeman 
appears seldom in comparison with the frequency of his 
occurrence in more reputable thoroughfares. I used to 
think that the inhabitants would have ample time to 
murder one another, or any stranger, like myself, who 
might violate the filthy sanctities of the place, before the 
law could bring up its lumbering assistance. Neverthe- 
less, there is a supervision ; nor does the watchfulness of 
authority permit the populace to be tempted to any out- 
break. Once, in a time of dearth I noticed a ballad- 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 319 

singer going through the street hoarsely chanting some 
discordant strain in a provincial dialect, of which I could 
only make out that it addressed the sensibilities of the 
auditors on the score of starvation ; but by his side stalked 
the policeman, offering no interference, but watchful to 
bear what this rough minstrel said or sang, and silence 
him, if his effusion threatened to prove too soul-stirring. 
In my judgment, however, there is little or no danger 
of that kind: they starve patiently, sicken patiently, die 
patiently, not through resignation, but a diseased flaccid- 
ity of hope. If ever they should do mischief to those 
above them, it will probably be by the communication of 
some destructive pestilence; for, so the medical men af- 
firm, they suffer all the ordinary diseases with a degree 
of virulence elsewhere unknown, and keep among them- 
selves traditionary plagues that have long ceased to afflict 
more fortunate societies. Charity herself gathers her robe 
about her to avoid their contact. It would be a dire re- 
venge, indeed, if they were to prove their claims to be 
reckoned of one blood and nature with the noblest and 
wealthiest by compelling them to inhale death through 
the diffusion of their own poverty-poisoned atmosphere. 

A true Englishman is a kind man at heart, but has an 
unconquerable dislike to poverty and beggary. Beggars 
have heretofore been so strange to an American that he 
is apt to become their prey, being recognized through his 
national peculiarities, and beset by them in the streets. 
The English smile at him, and say that there are ample 
public arrangements for every pauper's possible need, 
that street charity promotes idleness and vice, and that 
yonder personification of misery on the pavement will lay 
up a good day's profit, besides supping more luxuriously 
than the dupe who gives him a shilling. By and by the 
stranger adopts their theory and begins to practise upon 



O'ZO OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

it, much to his own temporary freedom from annoyance, 
but not entirely without moral detriment or sometimes 
a too late contrition. Years afterwards, it may be, his 
memory is still haunted by some vindictive wretch whose 
cheeks were pale and hunger-pinched, whose rags flut- 
tered in the east-wind, whose right arm was paralyzed 
and his left leg shrivelled into a mere nerveless stick, 
but whom he passed by remorselessly because an Eng- 
lishman chose to say that the fellow's misery looked too 
perfect, was too artistically got up, to be genuine. Even 
allowing this to be true (as, a hundred chances to one, 
it was), it would still have been a clear case of economy 
to buy him off with a little loose silver, so that his 
lamentable figure should not limp at the heels of your 
conscience all over the world. To own the truth, I pro- 
vided myself with several such imaginary persecutors in 
England, and recruited their number with at least one 
sickly-looking wretch whose acquaintance I first made 
ai A.ssisi, in Italy, and, taking a dislike to something sin- 
ister in his aspect, permitted him to beg early and late, 
and all day long, without getting a single baiocco. At 
my latest glimpse of him, the villain avenged himself, not 
by a volley of horrible curses, as any other Italian beg- 
gar would, but by taking an expression so grief-stricken, 
want-wrung, hopeless, and withal resigned, that I could 
paint his lifelike portrait at this moment. Were I to go 
over the same ground again, I would listen to no man's 
theories, but buy the little luxury of beneficence at a 
cheap rate, instead of doing myself a moral mischief by 
exuding a stony incrustation over whatever natural sen- 
sibility I might possess. 

On the other hand, there were some mendicants whose 
utmost efforts I even now felicitate myself on having 
withstood. Such was a phenomenon abridged of his 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 321 

lower half, who beset me for two or three years together, 
and, in spite of his deficiency of locomotive members, 
had some supernatural method of transporting himself 
(simultaneously, I believe) to all quarters of the city. 
He wore a sailor's jacket (possibly, because skirts would 
have been a superfluity to his figure), and had a remark- 
ably broad-shouldered and muscular frame, surmounted 
by a large, fresh-colored face, which was full of power 
and intelligence. His dress and linen were the perfec- 
tion of neatness. Once a day, at least, wherever I went, 
I suddenly became aware of this trunk of a man on the 
path before me, resting on his base, and looking as if he 
had just sprouted out of the pavement, and would sink 
into it again and reappear at some other spot the instant 
you left him behind. The expression of his eye was 
perfectly respectful, but terribly fixed, holding your own 
as by fascination, never once winking, never wavering 
from its point-blank gaze right into your face, till you 
were completely beyond the range of his battery of one 
immense rifled cannon. This was his mode of soliciting 
alms ; and he remiuded me of the old beggar who ap- 
pealed so touchingly to the charitable sympathies of Gil 
Bias, taking aim at him from the roadside with a long- 
barrelled musket, The intentness and directness of his 
silent appeal, his close and unrelenting attack upon your 
individuality, respectful as it seemed, was the very flower 
of insolence; or, if you give it a possibly truer interpre- 
tation, it was the tyrannical effort of a man endowed 
with great natural force of character to constrain your 
reluctant will to his purpose. Apparently, he had staked 
his salvation upon the ultimate success of a daily strug- 
gle between himself and me, the triumph of which would 
compel me to become a tributary to the hat that lay on 
the pavement beside him. Man or fiend, however, there 
14* u 



3:2.2 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

was a stubbornness in bis intended victim which this mas- 
sive fragment of a mighty personality bad not altogether 
reckoned upon, and by its aid I was enabled to pass him 
at my customary pace hundreds of times over, quietly 
meeting his terribly respectful eye, and allowing him the 
fair chance which I felt to be bis due, to subjugate me, 
if he really had the strength for it. He never succeeded, 
but, on the other hand, never gave up the contest ; and 
should I ever walk those streets again, I am certain that 
the truncated tyrant will sprout up through the pave- 
ment and look me fixedly in the eye, and perhaps got the 
victory. 

I should think all the more highly of myself, if I had 
shown equal heroism in resisting another class of beg- 
garly depredators, who assailed me on my weaker side 
and won an easy spoil. Such was the sanctimonious 
clergyman, with his white cravat, who visited me with a 
subscription-paper, which he himself had drawn up, in 
a case of heart-rending distress; — the respectable and 
ruined tradesman, going from door to door, shy and si- 
lent in his own person, but accompanied by a sympathiz- 
ing friend, who bore testimony to his integrity, and stated 
the unavoidable misfortunes that had crushed him down ; 
— or the delicate and prettily dressed lady, who had 
been bred in affluence, but was suddenly thrown upon 
the perilous charities of the world by the death of an 
indulgent, but secretly insolvent father, or the commer- 
cial catastrophe and simultaneous suicide of the best of 
husbands; — or the gifted, but unsuccessful author, ap- 
pealing to my fraternal sympathies,' generously rejoicing 
in some small prosperities which he was kind enough to 
term my own triumphs in the field of letters, and claim- 
ing to have largely contributed to them by his unbought 
notices in the public journals. England is full of such 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 323 

people, and a hundred other varieties of peripatetic trick- 
sters, higher than these, and lower, who act their parts 
tolerably well, but seldom with an absolutely illusive 
effect. I knew at once, raw Yankee as I was, that they 
were humbugs, almost without an exception, — rats that 
nibble at the honest bread and cheese of the co mm unity, 
and grow fat by their petty pilferings, — yet often gave 
them what they asked, and privately owned myself a 
simpleton. There is a decorum which restrains you (un- 
less you happen to be a police-constable) from breaking 
through a crust of plausible respectability, even when 
you are certain that there is a knave beneath it. 

After making myself as familiar as I decently could 
with the poor streets, I became curious to sec what kind 
of a home was provided for the inhabitants at the public 
expense, fearing that it must needs be a most comfortless 
one, or else their choice (if choice it were) of so miser- 
able a life outside was truly difficult to account for. Ac- 
cordingly, I visited a great almshouse, and was glad to 
observe how unexceptionably all the parts of the estab- 
lishment were carried on, and what an orderly life, full- 
fed, sufficiently reposeful, and undisturbed by the arbitrary 
exercise of authority, seemed to be led there. Possibly, 
indeed, it was that very orderliness, and the cruel neces- 
sity of being neat and clean, and even the comfort result- 
ing from these and other Christian-like restraints and 
regulations, that constituted the principal grievance on 
the part of the poor, shiftless inmates, accustomed to 
a lifelong luxury of dirt and harum-scarumness. The 
wild life of the streets has perhaps as unforgetable a 
charm, to those who have once thoroughly imbibed it, 
as the life of the forest or the prairie. But I conceive 
rather that there must be insuperable difficulties, for the 



3£4 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OE ENGLISH POVERTY. 

majority of the poor, in the way of getting admittance to 
the almshouse, tlmu that a merely aesthetic preference 

for the street would incline the pauper-class to fare 
scantily and precariously, and expose their raggedness 
to the rain and snow, when such a hospitable door stood 
wide open for their entrance. It might be that the rough- 
est and darkest side of the matter was not shown me, 
there being persons of eminent station and of both sexes 
in the party which I accompanied; and, of course, a 
properly trained public functionary would have deemed 
it a monstrous rudeness, as well as a great shame, to ex- 
hibit anything to people of rank that might too painfully 
shock their sensibilities. 

The women's ward was the portion of the establish- 
ment which we especially examined. It could not be 
questioned that they were treated with kindness as well 
as care. No doubt, as has been already suggested, some 
of them felt the irksomeness of submission to general 
rules of orderly behavior, after being accustomed to that 
perfect freedom from the minor proprieties, at least, which 
is one of the compensations of absolutely hopeless pov- 
erty, or of any circumstances that set us fairly below the 
decencies of life. I asked the governor of the house 
whether he met with any difficulty in keeping peace and 
order among his inmates ; and he informed me that his 
troubles among the women were incomparably greater 
than with the men. They were freakish, and apt to be 
quarrelsome, inclined to plague and pester one another 
in ways that it was impossible to lay hold of, and to 
thwart his own authority by the like intangible methods. 
He said this with the utmost good-nature, and quite won 
my regard by so placidly resigning himself to the in- 
evitable necessity of letting the women throw dust into 
his eyes. They certainly looked peaceable and sisterly 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 325 

enough, as I saw them, though still it might be faintly 
perceptible that some of them were consciously playing 
their parts before the governor and his distinguished 
visitors. 

This governor seemed to me a man thoroughly fit for 
his position. Ail American, in an office of similar re- 
sponsibility, would doubtless be a much superior person, 
better educated, possessing a far wider range of thought, 
more naturally acute, with a quicker tact of external ob- 
servation and a readier faculty of dealing with difficult 
cases. The women would not succeed in throwing half 
so much dust into his eyes. Moreover, his black coat, 
and thin, sallow visage, would make him look like a 
scholar, and his manners would indefinitely approximate 
to those of a gentleman. But I cannot help question- 
ing, whether, on the whole, these higher endowments 
would produce decidedly better results. The English- 
man was thoroughly plebeian both in aspect and be- 
havior, a bluff, ruddy-faced, hearty, kindly, yeoman-like 
personage, with no refinement whatever, nor any super- 
fluous sensibility, but gifted with a native wholesomeness 
of character which must have been a very beneficial ele- 
ment in the atmosphere of the almshouse. He spoke to 
his pauper family in loud, good-humored, cheerful tones, 
and treated them with a healthy freedom that probably 
caused the forlorn wretches to feel as if they were free 
and healthy likewise. If he had understood them a little 
better, he would not have treated them half so wisely. 
We are apt to make sickly people more morbid, and un- 
fortunate people more miserable, by endeavoring to adapt 
our deportment to their especial and individual needs. 
They eagerly accept our well-meant efforts ; but it is like 
returning their own sick breath back upon themselves, to 
be breathed over and over again, iiitensifvine the inward 



326 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

mischief at every repetition. The sympathy that would 
really do them good is of a kind that recognizes their 
sound and healthy parts, and ignores the part affected by 
disease, which will thrive under the eye of a too close 
observer like a poisonous weed in the sunshine. My 
good friend the governor had no tendencies in the latter 
direction, and abundance of them in the former, and was 
consequently as wholesome and invigorating as the west- 
wind with a little spice of the north in it, brightening the 
dreary visages that encountered us as if he had carried 
a sunbeam in his hand. He expressed himself by his 
whole being and personality, and by works more than 
words, and had the not unusual English merit of know- 
ing what to do much better than how to talk about it. 

The women, I imagine, must have felt one imperfection 
in their state, however comfortable otherwise. They 
were forbidden, or, at all events, lacked the means, to 
follow out their natural instinct of adorning themselves ; 
all were dressed in one homely uniform of blue-checked 
gowns, with such caps upon their heads as English ser- 
vants wear. Generally, too, they had one dowdy Eng- 
lish aspect, and a vulgar type of features so nearly alike 
that they seemed literally to constitute a sisterhood. 
We have few of these absolutely unilluminated faces 
among our native American population, individuals of 
whom must be singularly unfortunate, if, mixing as we 
do, no drop of gentle blood has contributed to reiine the 
turbid element, no gleam of hereditary intelligence has 
lighted up the stolid eyes, which their forefathers brought 
from the Old Country. Even in this English almshouse, 
however, there was at least one person who claimed to be 
intimately connected with rank and wealth. The gov- 
ernor, after suggesting that this person would probably 
be gratified by our visit, ushered us into a small parlor. 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 327 

which was furnished a little more like a room in a private 
dwelling than others that we entered, and had a row of 
religious books and fashionable novels on the mantel- 
piece. An old lady sat at a bright coal-fire, reading a 
romance, and rose to receive us with a certain pomp of 
maimer and elaborate display of ceremonious courtesy, 
which, in spite of myself, made me inwardly question the 
genuineness of her aristocratic pretensions. But, at any 
rate, she looked like a respectable old soul, and was evi- 
dently gladdened to the very core of her frost-bitten 
heart by the awful punctiliousness with which we re- 
sponded to her gracious and hospitable, though unfa- 
miliar welcome. After a little polite conversation, we 
retired ; and the governor, with a lowered voice and an 
air of deference, told us that she had been a lady of 
quality, and had ridden in her own equipage, not many 
years before, and now lived in continual expectation that 
some of her rich relatives would drive up in their car- 
riages to take her away. Meanwhile, he added, she was 
treated with great respect by her fellow-paupers. I could 
not help thinking, from a few criticisable peculiarities in 
her talk and manner, that there might have been a mis- 
take on the governor's part, and perhaps a venial exag- 
geration on the old lady's, concerning her former position 
in society ; but what struck me was the forcible instance 
of that most prevalent of English vanities, the preten- 
sion to aristocratic connection, on one side, and the sub- 
mission and reverence with which it was accepted by the 
governor and his household, on the other. Among our- 
selves, I think, when wealth and eminent position have 
taken their departure, they seldom leave a pallid ghost 
behind them, — or, if it sometimes stalks abroad, few 
recognize it. 

We went into several other rooms, at the doors of 



328 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

which, pausing on the outside, we could hear the volu- 
bility, and sometimes the wrangling, of the female in- 
habitants within, but invariably found silence and peace 
when we stepped over the threshold. The women were 
grouped together in their sitting-rooms, sometimes three 
or four, sometimes a larger number, classified by their 
spontaneous affinities, I suppose, and all busied, so far 
as I can remember, with the one occupation of knitting 
coarse yarn stockings. Hardly any of them, I am sorry 
to say, had a brisk or cheerful air, though it often stirred 
them up to a momentary vivacity to be accosted by the 
governor, and they seemed to like being noticed, however 
slightly, by the visitors. The happiest person whom I 
saw there (and, running hastily through my experiences, 
I hardly recollect to have seen a happier one in my life, 
if you take a careless flow of spirits as happiness) was 
an old woman that lay in bed among ten or twelve heavy- 
looking females, who plied their knitting-work round 
about her. She laughed, when we entered, and imme- 
diately began to talk to us, in a thin, little, spirited 
quaver, claiming to be more than a century old ; and the 
governor (in whatever way he happened to be cognizant 
of the fact) confirmed her age to be a hundred and four. 
Her jauntincss and cackling merriment were really won- 
derful. It was as if she had got through with all her 
actual business in life two or three generations ago, and 
now, freed from every responsibility for herself or others, 
had only to keep up a mirthful state of mind till the short 
time, or long time (and, happy as she was, she appeared 
not to care whether it were long or short), before Death, 
who had misplaced her name in his list, might remember 
to take her away. She had gone quite round the circle 
of human existence, and come back to the play -ground 
again. And so she had grown to be a kind of miraculous 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. ■ 329 

old pet, the plaything of people seventy or eighty years 
younger than herself, who talked and laughed with her 
as if she were a child, finding great delight in her wayward 
and strangely playful responses, into some of which she 
cunningly conveyed a gibe that caused their ears to tingle 
a little. She had done getting out of bed in this world, 
and lay there to be waited upon like a cpieen or a baby. 

In the same room sat a pauper who had once been [in 
actress of considerable repute, but was compelled to give 
up her profession by a softening of the brain. The dis- 
ease seemed to have stolen the continuity out of her 
life, and disturbed all healthy relationship betAveen the 
thoughts within her and the world without. On our first 
entrance, she looked cheerfully at us, and showed herself 
ready to engage in conversation ; but suddenly, while we 
were talking with the century-old crone, the poor actress 
began to weep, contorting her face with extravagant 
stage-grimaces, and wringing her hands for some inscru- 
table sorrow. It might have been a reminiscence of 
actual calamity in her past life, or, quite as probably, it 
was but a dramatic woe, beneath which she had stag- 
gered and shrieked and wrung her hands with hundreds 
of repetitions in the sight of crowded theatres, and been 
as often comforted by thunders of applause. But my 
idea of the mystery was, that she had a sense of wrong 
in seeing the aged woman (whose empty vivacity was 
like the rattling of dry peas in a bladder) chosen as the 
central object of interest to the visitors, while she her- 
self, who had agitated thousands of hearts with a breath, 
sat starving for the admiration that was her natural food. 
I appeal to the whole society of artists of the Beautiful 
and the Imaginative, — poets, romancers, painters, sculp- 
tors, actors, — whether or no this is a grief that may be 
felt even amid the torpor of a dissolving brain ! 



330 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

We looked into a good many sleeping-chambers, where 
were rows of beds, mostly calculated for two occupants, 
and provided with sheets and pillow-cases that resembled 
sackcloth. It appeared to me that the sense of beauty 
was insufficiently regarded in all the arrangements of the 
almshouse; a little cheap luxury for the eve, at least, 
might do the poor folks a substantial good. But, at all 
events, there was the beauty of perfect neatness and or- 
derliness, which, being heretofore known to few of them, 
was perhaps as much as they could well digest in the 
remnant of their lives. We were invited into the laun- 
dry, where a great washing and drying were in process, 
the whole atmosphere being hot and vaporous with the 
steam of wet -garments and bedclothes. This atmosphere 
was the pauper-life of the past week or fortnight resolved 
into a gaseous state, and breathing it, however fastid- 
iously, we were forced to inhale the strange element into 
our inmost being. Had the Queen been there, I know 
not how she could have eseipcd the necessity. What 
an intimate brotherhood is this in which we dwell, do 
what we may to put an artificial remoteness between the 
high creature and the low one ! A poor man's breath, 
borne on the vehicle of tobacco-smoke, floats into a pal- 
ace-window and reaches the nostrils of a monarch. It 
is but an example, obvious to the sense, of the innumer- 
able and secret channels by which, at every moment of 
our lives, the How and reflux of a common humanity per- 
vade us all. How superficial are the niceties of such as 
pretend to keep aloof! Let the whole world be cleansed, 
or not a man or woman of us all can be clean. 

By and by we came to the w^ard where the children 
were kept, on entering which, we saw, in the first place, 
several unlovely and unwholesome little people lazily 
playing together in a court-yard. And here a singular 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 331 

incommodity befell* one member of our party. Among 
the children was a wretched, pale, half-torpid little thing 
(about six years old, perhaps, but I know not whether a 
girl or a boy), with a humor in its eyes and face, which 
the governor said was the scurvy, and which appeared to 
bedim its powers of vision, so that it toddled about grop- 
ingly, as if in quest of it did not precisely know what. 
This child — this sickly, wretched, humor-eaten infant, 
the offspring of unspeakable sin and sorrow, whom it 
must have required several generations of guilty progeni- 
tors to render so pitiable an object as we beheld it — im- 
mediately took an unaccountable fancy to the gentleman 
just hinted at. It prowled about him like a pet kitten, 
rubbing against his legs, following everywhere at his 
heels, pulling at his coat-tails, and, at last, exerting all 
the speed that its poor limbs were capable of, got directly 
before him and held forth its arms, mutely insisting on 
being taken up. It said not a word, being perhaps un- 
der-witted and incapable of prattle. But it smiled up in 
his face, — a sort of woful gleam was that smile, through 
the sickly blotches that covered its features, — and found 
means to express such a perfect confidence that it was 
going to be fondled and made much of, that there was no 
possibility in a human heart of balking its expectation. 
It was as if God had promised the poor child this favor 
on behalf of that individual, and he was bound to fulfil 
the contract, or else no longer call himself a man among 
men. Nevertheless, it could be no easy thing for him to 
do, he being a person burdened with more than an Eng- 
lishman's customary reserve, shy of actual contact with 
human beings, afflicted with a peculiar distaste for what- 
ever was ugly, and, furthermore, accustomed to that habit 
of observation from an insulated stand-point which is said 
(but, I hope, erroneously) to have the tendency of put- 
ting ice into the blood. 



332 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OE ENGLISH POVERTY. 

So I watched the struggle in his mind with a good 
deal of interest, and am seriously of opinion that he did 
an heroic act, and effected more than he dreamed of to- 
wards his final salvation, when he took up the loathsome 
child and caressed it as tenderly as if he had been its father. 
To be sure, we all smiled at him, at the time, but doubt- 
less would have acted pretty much the same in a similar 
stress of circumstances. The child, at any rale, ap- 
peared to be satisfied with his behavior; for when lie had 
held it a considerable time, and set it down, it still fa- 
vored him with its company, keeping fast hold of his fore- 
finger till we reached the confines of the place. And on 
our return through the court-yard, after visiting another 
part of the establishment, here again was this same little 
Wretchedness waiting for its victim, with a smile of joy- 
ful, and yet dull recognition about its scabby mouth and in 
its rheumy eyes. No doubt, the child's mission in refer- 
ence to our friend was to remind him that he was re- 
sponsible, in his degree, for all the sufferings and mis- 
demeanors of the world in which he lived, and was not 
entitled to look upon a particle of its dark calamity as if 
it were none of his concern : the offspring of a brother's 
iniquity being his own blood-relation, and the guilt, like- 
wise, a burden on him, unless he expiated it by better 
deeds. 

All the children in this ward seemed to be invalids, and, 
going up stairs, we found more of them in the same or a 
worse condition than the little creature just described, 
with their mothers (or more probably other women, for 
the infants were mostly foundlings) in attendance as 
nurses. The matron of the ward, a middle-aged woman, 
remarkably kind and motherly in aspect, was walking to 
and fro across the chamber — on that weary journey in 
which careful mothers and nurses travel so continually 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 333 

and so far, and gain never a step of progress — with an 
unquiet baby in her arms. She assured us that she en- 
joyed her occupation, being exceedingly fond of children; 
and, in fact, the absence of timidity in all the little peo- 
ple was a sufficient proof that they could have had no 
experience of harsh treatment, though, on the other hand, 
none of them appeared to be attracted to one individual 
more than another. In this point they differed widely 
from the poor child below stairs. They seemed to recog- 
nize a universal motherhood in womankind, and cared 
not which individual might be the mother of the moment. 
I found their tameness as shocking as did Alexander Sel- 
kirk that of the brute subjects of his else solitary kingdom. 
It was a sort of tame familiarity, a perfect indifference to 
the approach of strangers, such as I never noticed in other 
children. I accounted for it partly by their nerveless, un- 
strung state of body, incapable of the quick thrills of de- 
light and fear which play upon the lively harp-strings of 
a healthy child's nature, and partly by their woful lack 
of acquaintance with a private home, and their being 
therefore destitute of the sweet home-bred shyness, which 
is like the sanctity of heaven about a mother-petted child. 
Their condition was like that of chickens hatched in an 
oven, and growing up without the especial guardianship 
of a matron hen: both the chicken and the child, me- 
thinks, must needs want something that is essential to 
their respective characters. 

In this chamber (which was spacious, containing a 
large number of beds) there was a clear fire burning on 
the hearth, as in all the other occupied rooms ; and 
directly in front of the blaze sat a woman holding a 
baby, which, beyond all reach of comparison, was the 
most horrible object that ever afflicted my sight. Days 
afterwards — nay, even now, when I bring it up vividly 



334 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

before my mind's eye — it seemed to lie upon tlie floor 
of my heart, polluting my moral being with the sense of 
something grievously amiss in the entire conditions of 
humanity. The holiest man could not be otherwise than 
full of wickedness, the chastest virgin seemed impure, in 
a world where such a babe was possible. The governor 
whispered me, apart, that, like nearly all the rest of tliem, 
it was the child of unhealthy parents. Ah, yes ! There 
was the mischief. This spectral infant, a liideous mock- 
ery of the visible link which Love creates between man 
and woman, was born of disease and sin. Diseased Sin 
was its father, and Sinful Disease its mother, and their 
offspring lay in the woman's arms like a nursing Pesti- 
lence, which, could it live and grow up, would make the 
world a more accursed abode than ever heretofore. Thank 
Heaven, it could not live ! This baby, if we must give it 
that sweet name, seemed to be three or four months old, 
but, being such an unthrifty changeling, might have been 
considerably older. It was all covered with blotches, 
and preternaturally dark and discolored ; it was withered 
away, quite shrunken and fleshless ; it breathed only 
amid pantings and gaspings, and moaned painfully at 
every gasp. The only comfort in reference to it was the 
evident impossibility of its surviving to draw many more 
of those miserable, moaning breaths ; and it would have 
been infinitely less heart-depressing to see it die, right 
before my eyes, than to depart and carry it alive in my 
remembrance, still suffering the incalculable torture of its 
little life. I can by no means express how horrible this 
infant was, neither ought I to attempt it. And yet I 
must add one final touch. Young as the poor little crea- 
ture was, its pain and misery had endowed it with a pre- 
mature intelligence, insomuch that its eyes seemed to 
stare at the bystanders out of their sunken sockets 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OP ENGLISH POVERTY. 335 

knowingly and appealingly, as if summoning us one and 
all to witness the deadly wrong of its existence. At least, 
I so interpreted its look, when it positively met and re- 
sponded to my own awe-stricken gaze, and therefore I 
lay the case, as far as I am able, before mankind, on 
whom God has imposed the necessity to suffer in soul and 
body till this dark and dreadful wrong be righted. 

Thence we went to the school-rooms, which were un- 
derneath the chapel. The pupils, like the children whom 
we had just seen, were, in large proportion, foundlings. 
Almost without exception, they looked sickly, with marks 
of eruptive trouble in their doltish faces, and a general 
tendency to diseases of the eye. Moreover, the poor 
little wretches appeared to be uneasy within their skins, 
nnd screwed themselves about on the benches in a dis- 
agreeably suggestive way, as if they had inherited the 
evil habits of their parents as an innermost garment of 
the same texture and material as the shirt of Nessus, and 
must wear it with unspeakable discomfort as long as they 
lived. I saw only a single child that looked healthy ; 
and on my pointing him out, the governor informed me 
that this little boy, the sole exception to the miserable 
aspect of his school-fellows, was not a foundling, nor 
properly a work-house child, being born of respectable 
parentage, and his father one of the officers of the insti- 
tution. As for the remainder, — the hundred pale abor- 
tions to be counted against one rosy -cheeked boy, — 
what shall we say or do ? Depressed by the sight of 
so much misery, and uninventive of remedies for the 
evils that force themselves on my perception, I can do 
little more than recur to the idea already hinted at in 
the early part of this article, regarding the speedy neces- 
sity of a new deluge. So far as these children are con- 
cerned, at any rate, it would be a blessing to the human 



336 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

race, which they will contribute to enervate and cor- 
rupt, — a greater blessing to themselves, who inherit no 
patrimony but disease and vice, and in whose souls, if 
there be a spark of God's' life, this seems the only pos- 
sible mode of keeping it aglow, — if every one of them 
could be drowned to-night, by their best friends, instead 
of being put tenderly to bed. This heroic method of 
treating human maladies, moral and material, is certainly 
beyond the scope of man's discretionary rights, and prob- 
ably will not be. adopted by Divine Providence until the 
opportunity of milder reformation shall have been offered 
us again and again, through a series of future ages. 

It may be fair to acknowledge that the humane and 
excellent governor, as well as other persons better ac- 
quainted with the subject than myself, took a less gloomy 
view of it, though still so dark a one as to involve scanty 
consolation. They remarked that individuals of the male 
sex, picked up in the streets and nurtured in the work- 
house, sometimes succeed tolerably well in life, because 
they are taught trades before being turned into the world, 
and, by dint of immaculate behavior and good luck, are 
not unlikely to get employment and earn a livelihood. 
The case is different with the girls. They can only go 
to service, and are invariably rejected by families of re- 
spectability on account of their .origin, and for the better 
reason of their unfitness to fill satisfactorily even the 
meanest situations in a well-ordered English household. 
Their resource is to take service with people only a step 
or two above the poorest class, with whom they fare 
scantily, endure harsh treatment, lead shifting and pre- 
carious lives, and finally drop into the slough of evil, 
through which, in their best estate, they do but pick their 
slimy way on stepping-stones. 

Prom the schools we went to the bake-house, and the 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 337 

brew-house (tor such cruelty is not harbored in the heart 
of a true Englishman as to deny a pauper his daily allow- 
ance of beer), and through the kitchens, where we beheld 
an immense pot over the tire, surging and walloping with 
some kind of a savory stew that filled it up to its brim. 
We also visited a tailor's shop, and a shoemaker's shop, 
in both of which a number of men, and pale, diminutive 
apprentices, were at work, diligently enough, though 
seemingly with small heart in the business. Finally, 
the governor ushered us into a shed, inside of which was 
piled up an immense quantity of new coffins. They were 
of the plainest description, made of pine boards, probably 
of American growth, not very nicely smoothed by the 
plane, neither painted nor stained with black, but pro- 
vided with a loop of rope at cither end for the conven- 
ience of lifting the rude box and its inmate into the cart 
that shall carry them to the burial-ground. There, in 
holes ten feet deep, the paupers are buried one above 
another, mingling their relics indistiuguishably. In 
another world may they resume their individuality, and 
find it a happier one than here ! 

As we departed, a character came under our notice 
which I have met with in all almshouses, whether of the 
city or village, or in England or America. It was the 
familiar simpleton, who .shuffled across the court-yard, 
clattering his wooden-soled shoes, to greet us with a 
howl or a laugh, I hardly know which, holding out his 
hand for a penny, and chuckling grossly when it was 
given him. All under- witted persons, so far as my ex- 
perience goes, have this craving for copper coin, and 
appear to estimate its value by a miraculous instinct, 
which is one of the earliest gleams of human intelligence 
while the nobler faculties are yet in abeyance. There 
may come a time, even in this world, when we shall 
15 v 



338 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

all understand that our tendency to the individual appro- 
priation of gold and broad acres, fine houses, and such 
good and beautiful things as are equally enjoyable by a 
multitude, is but a trait of imperfectly developed intelli- 
gence, like the simpleton's cupidity of a penny. When 
that day dawns, — and probably not till then, — I im- 
agine that there will be no more poor streets nor need of 
almshouses. 

I was once present at the wedding of some poor Eng- 
lish people, and was deeply impressed by the spectacle, 
though by no means with such proud and delightful emo- 
tions as seem to have affected all England on the recent 
occasion of the marriage of its Prince. It was in the 
Cathedral at Manchester, a particularly black and grim 
old structure, into which I had stepped to examine some 
ancient and curious wood-carvings within the choir. The 
woman in attendance greeted me with a smile (which 
always glimmers forth on the feminine visage, I know 
not why, when a wedding is in question), and asked me 
to take a seat in the nave till some poor parties were 
married, it being the Easter holidays, and a good time 
for them to marry, because no fees would be demanded 
by the clergyman. I sat down accordingly, and soon the 
parson and his clerk appeared at the altar, and a con- 
siderable crowd of people made their entrance at a side- 
door, and ranged themselves in a long, huddled line 
across the chancel. They were my acquaintances of the 
poor streets, or persons in a precisely similar condition of 
life, and were now come to their marriage-ceremony in 
just such garbs as I had always seen them wear : the 
men in their loafers' coats, out at elbows, or their labor- 
ers' jackets, defaced with grimy toil ; the women draw- 
ing their shabby shawls tighter about their shoulders, to 
hide the raggedness beneath; all of them unbrushed, un- 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 339 

shaven, unwashed, uncombed, and wrinkled with penury 
and care ; nothing virgin-like in the brides, nor hopeful 
or energetic in the bridegrooms ; — they were, in short, 
the mere rags and tatters of the human race, whom some 
east-wind of evil omen, howling along the streets, had 
chanced to sweep together into an un fragrant heap. 
Each and all of them, conscious of his or her individual 
misery, had blundered into the strange miscalculation of 
supposing that they could lessen the sum of it by multi- 
plying it into the misery of another person. All the 
couples (and it was difficult, in such a confused crowd, to 
compute exactly their number) stood up at once, and had 
execution done upon them in the lump, the clergyman 
addressing only small parts of the service to eacli indi- 
vidual pair, but so managing the larger portion as to 
include the whole company without the trouble of rep- 
etition. By this compendious contrivance, one would 
apprehend, he came dangerously near making every man 
and woman the husband or wife of every other; nor, 
perhaps, would he have perpetrated much additional 
mischief by the mistake ; but, after receiving a benedic- 
tion in common, they assorted themselves hi their own 
fashion, as they only knew how, and departed to the gar- 
rets, or the cellars, or the unsheltered street-corners, 
where their honeymoon and subsequent lives were to be 
spent. The parson smiled decorously, the clerk and the 
sexton grinned broadly, the female attendant tittered al- 
most aloud, and even the married parties seemed to see 
something exceedingly funny in the affair ; but for my 
part, though generally apt enough to be tickled by a joke, 
I laid it away in my memory as one of the saddest sights 
I ever looked upon. 

Not very long afterwards, I happened to be passing 
the same venerable Cathedral, and heard a clang of joyful 



340 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

bells, and belield a bridal party coming down the steps 
towards a carriage and four horses, with a portly coach- 
man and two postilions, that waited at the gate. One 
parson and one service had amalgamated the wretched- 
ness of a score of paupers ; a Bishop and three or four 
clergymen had combined their spiritual might to forge 
the golden links of this other marriage -bond. The bride- 
groom's mien had a sort of careless and kindly English 
pride; the bride floated along in her white drapery, a 
creature so nice and delicate that it was a luxury to see 
her, and a pity that her silk slippers should touch any- 
thing so grimy as the old stones of the churchyard ave- 
nue. The crowd of ragged people, who always cluster to 
witness what they may of an aristocratic wedding, broke 
into audible admiration of the bride's beauty and the 
bridegroom's manliness, and uttered prayers and ejacu- 
lations (possibly paid for in alms) for the happiness of 
both. If the most favorable of earthly conditions could 
make them happy, they had every prospect of it. They 
were going to live on their abundance in one of those 
stately and delightful English homes, such as no other 
people ever created or inherited, a hall set far and safe 
within its owii private grounds, and surrounded with 
venerable trees, shaven lawns, rich shrubbery, and trim- 
mest pathways, the whole so artfully contrived and tended 
that summer rendered it a paradise, and even winter 
would hardly disrobe it of its beauty ; and all this fair 
property seemed more exclusively and inalienably their 
own, because of its descent through many forefathers, 
each of whom had added an improvement or a charm, 
and thus transmitted it with a stronger stamp of rightful 
possession to his heir. And is it possible, after all, that 
there may be a flaw in the title-deeds ? Is, or is not, the 
system wrong that gives one married pair so immense 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OY ENGLISH POVERTY. 341 

a superfluity of luxurious home, and shuts out a railliou 
others from any home whatever ? One day or another, 
safe as they deem themselves, and safe as the hereditary 
temper of the people really tends to make them, the 
gentlemen of England will be compelled to face this 
question. 




CIVIC BANQUETS. 




T has often perplexed me to imagine how an 
Englishman will be able to reconcile himself to 
any future state of existence from which the 
earthly institution of dinner shall be excluded. Even if 
he fail to take his appetite along with him (which it 
seems to me hardly possible to believe, since this endow- 
ment is so essential to his composition), the immortal 
day must still admit an interim of two or three hours 
during which he will be conscious of a slight distaste, 
at all events, if not an absolute repugnance, to merely 
spiritual nutriment. The idea of dinner has so imbedded 
itself among his highest and deepest characteristics, so 
illuminated itself with intellect and softened itself with 
the kindest emotions of his heart, so linked itself with 
Church and State, and grown so majestic with long 
hereditary customs and ceremonies, that, by taking it 
utterly away, Death, instead of putting the final touch to 
his perfection, would leave him infinitely less complete 
than we have already known him. He could not be 
roundly happy. Paradise, among all its enjoyments, 
would lack one daily felicity which his sombre little 
island possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to conjec- 
ture that a provision may have been made, in this par- 
ticular, for the Englishman's exceptional necessities. It 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 343 

strikes me that Milton was of the opinion here suggested, 
and may have intended to throw out a delightful and con- 
solatory hope for his countrymen, when he represents the 
genial archangel as playing his part with such excellent 
appetite at Adam's dinner-table, and confining himself to 
fruit and vegetables only because, in those early days of 
her housekeeping, Eve had no more acceptable viands to 
set before him. Milton, indeed, had a true English taste 
for the pleasures of the table, though refined by the lofty 
and poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself. 
It is delicately implied in the refection in Paradise, and 
more substantially, though still elegantly, betrayed in the 
sonnet proposing to " Laurence, of virtuous father vir- 
tuous son," a series of nice little dinners in midwinter; 
and it blazes fully out in that uufasted banquet which, 
elaborate as it was, Satan tossed up in a trice from the 
kitchen-ranges of Tartarus. 

Among this people, indeed, so wise in their generation, 
dinner has a kind of sanctity quite independent of the 
dishes that maybe set upon the table; so that, if it be 
only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due reverence, and 
are rewarded with a degree of enjoyment which such 
reckless devourers as ourselves do not often find in our 
richest abundance. It is good to see how stanch they 
are after fifty or sixty years of heroic eating, still relying 
upon their digestive powers and indulging a vigorous ap- 
potite ; whereas an American has generally lost the one 
and learned to distrust the other long before reaching the 
earliest decline of life; and thenceforward he makes little 
account of his dinner, and dines at his peril, if at all. I 
know not whether my countrymen will allow me to tell 
them, though I think it scarcely too much to affirm, that 
on this side of the water, people never dine. At any 
rate, abundantly as Nature has provided us with most of 



344 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

the material requisites, the highest possible dinner has 
never yet been eaten in America. It is the consummate 
flower of civilization and refinement ; and our inability 
to produce it, or to appreciate its admirable beauty, if a 
happy inspiration should bring- it into bloom, marks 
fatally the limit of culture which we have attained. 

It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of 
cultivated Englishmen know how to dine in this elevated 
sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of the national 
character is still an impediment to them, even in that 
particular line where they are best qualified to excel. 
Though often present at good men's feasts, I remember 
only a single dinner, which, while lamentably conscious 
that many of its higher excellences were thrown away 
upon me, I yet could feel to be a perfect work of art. It 
could not, without unpardonable coarseness, be styled a 
matter of animal enjoyment, because, out of the very per- 
fection of that lower bliss, there had arisen a dream-like 
development of spiritual happiness. As in the master- 
pieces of painting and poetry, there was a something in- 
tangible, a final deliciousuess that only fluttered about 
your comprehension, vanishing whenever you tried to 
detain it, and compelling you to recognize it by faith 
rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set of 
senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, for 
the special fruition of this banquet, and that the guests 
around the table (only eight in number) were becoming 
so educated, polished, and softened, by the delicate in- 
fluences of what they ate and drank, as to be now a little 
more than mortal for the nonce. And there was that 
gentle, delicious sadness, too, which we find in the very 
summit of our most exquisite enjoyments, and feel it a 
charm beyond all the gayety through which it keeps 
breathing its undertone. In the present case, it was 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 345 

"worth a heavier sigh, to reflect that such a festal achieve- 
ment, — the production of so much art, skill, fancy, in- 
vention, and perfect taste, — the growth of all the ages, 
which appeared to have been ripening for this hour, since 
man first began to eat and to moisten his food with wine, 
■ — must lavish its happiness upon so brief a moment, 
when other beautiful things can be made a joy forever. 
Yet a dinner like this is no better than we can get, any 
day, at the rejuvenescent Cornhill Coffee-House, unless 
the whole man, with soul, intellect, and stomach, is ready 
to appreciate it, and unless, moreover, there is such a 
harmony in all the circumstances and accompaniments, 
and especially such a pitch of well-according minds, that 
nothing shall jar rudely against the guest's thoroughly 
awakened sensibilities. The world, and especially our 
part of it, being the rough, ill-assorted, and tumultuous 
place we find it, a beefsteak is about as good as any other 
dinner. 

The foregoing reminiscence, however, has drawn me 
aside from the main object of my sketch, in which 1 pur- 
posed to give a slight idea of those public, or partially 
public banquets, the custom of which so thoroughly pre- 
vails among the English people, that nothing is ever 
decided upon, in matters of peace and war, until they 
have chewed upon it in the shape of roast-beef, and 
talked it fully over in their cups. Nor are these fes- 
tivities merely occasional, but of stated recurrence in all 
considerable municipalities and associated bodies. The 
most ancient times appear to have been as familiar with 
them as the Englishmen of to-day. In many of the old 
English towns, you find some stately Gothic hall or 
chamber in which the Mayor and other authorities of 
the place have long held their sessions ; and always, in 
convenient contiguity, there is a dusky kitchen, with an 
15* 



316 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

immense fireplace where an ox might lie roasting at his 
ease, though the less gigantic scale of modern cookery 
may now have permitted the cobwebs to gather in its 
chimney. St. Mary's Hall, in Coventry, is so good a 
specimen of an ancient banqueting-room, that perhaps I 
may profitably devote a page or two to the description 
of it. 

In a narrow street, opposite to St. Michael's Church, 
one of the three famous spires of Coventry, you behold 
a mediaeval edifice, in the basement of which is such a 
venerable and now deserted kitchen as I have above 
alluded to, and, on the same level, a cellar, with low 
stone pillars and intersecting arches, like the crypt of a 
cathedral. Passing up a well-worn staircase, the oaken 
balustrade of which is as black as ebony, you enter the 
fine old hall, some sixty feet in length, and broad and 
lofty in proportion. It is lighted by six windows of 
modern stained glass, on one side, and by the immense 
and magnificent arch of another window at the farther 
end of the room, its rich a.nd ancient panes constituting 
a genuine historical piece, in which are represented some 
of the kingly personages of old times, with their heraldic 
blazonries. Notwithstanding the colored light thus thrown 
into the hall, and though it was noonday when I last saw 
it, the panelling of black-oak, and some faded tapestry 
that hung round the walls, together with the cloudy vault 
of the roof above, made a gloom, which the richness only 
illuminated into more appreciable effect. The tapestry is 
wrought with figures in the dress of Henry VI. 's time 
(which is the date of the hall), and is regarded by anti- 
quaries as authentic evidence both for the costume of that 
epoch, and, I believe, for the actual portraiture of men 
known in history. They are as colorless as ghosts, how- 
ever, and vanish drearily into the old stitch-work of their 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 347 

substance when you try to make them out. Coats-of- 
arms were formerly emblazoned all round the ball, but 
have been almost rubbed out by people hanging their 
overcoats against them or by women with dishclouts and 
scrubbing-brushes, obliterating hereditary glories in their 
blind hostility to dust and spiders' webs. Full-length 
portraits of several English kings, Charles II. being the 
earliest, hang on the walls ; and on the dais, or elevated 
part of the floor, stands an antique chair of state, which 
several royal characters are traditionally said to have oc- 
cupied while feasting here with their loyal subjects of 
Coventry. It is roomy enough for a person of kingly 
bulk, or even two such, but angular and uncomfortable, 
reminding me of the oaken settles which used to be seen 
in old-fashioned New England kitchens. 

Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining power, with- 
out the aid of a single pillar, is the original ceiling of 
oak, precisely similar in shape to the roof of a barn, with 
all the beams and rafters plainly to be seen. At the re- 
mote height of sixty feet, you hardly discern that they 
are carved with figures of angels and doubtless many 
other devices, of which the admirable Gothic art is 
wasted in the duskiness that has so long been brood- 
ing there. Over the entrance of the hall, opposite the 
great arched window, the party-colored radiance of which 
glimmers faintly through the interval, is a gallery for 
minstrels ; and a row of ancient suits of armor is sus- 
pended from its balustrade. It impresses me, too (for, 
having gone so far, I would fain leave nothing un- 
touched upon), that I remember, somewhere about these 
venerable precincts, a picture of the Countess Godiva on 
horseback, in which the artist lias been so niggardly of 
that illustrious lady's hair, that, if she had no ampler 
garniture, there was certainly much need for the good 



348 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

people of Coventry to shut their eyes. After all my 
pains, I fear that I have made but a poor hand at the 
description, as regards a transference of the scene from 
my own mind to the reader's. It gave me a most vivid 
idea of antiquity that had been very little tampered 
with; insomuch that, if a group of steel-clad knights had 
come clanking through the doorway, and a bearded and 
beruifed old figure had handed in a stately dame, rustling 
in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, unveiling a 
face of beauty somewhat tarnished in the mouldy tomb, 
yet stepping majestically to the trill of harp and viol 
from the minstrels' gallery, while the rusty armor re- 
sponded with a hollow ringing sound beneath, — why, I 
should have felt that these shadows, once so familiar with 
the spot, had a better right in St. Mary's Hall than I, a 
stranger from a far country which has no Past. But the 
moral of the foregoing description is to show how tena- 
ciously this love of pompous dinners, this reverence for 
dinner as a sacred institution, has caught hold of the Eng- 
lish character; since, from the earliest recognizable period, 
we find them building their civic banqueting-halls as mag- 
nificently as their palaces or cathedrals. 

I know not whether the hall just described is now used 
for festive purposes, but others of similar antiquity and 
splendor still are. Tor example, there is Barber- Sur- 
geons' Hall, in London, a very fine old room, adorned 
with admirably carved wood -work on the ceiling and 
walls. It is also enriched with Holbein's masterpiece, 
representing a grave assemblage of barbers and sur- 
geons, all portraits (with such extensive beards that 
methinks one half of the company might have been 
profitably occupied in trimming the other), kneeling be- 
fore King Henry VIII. Sir Robert Peel is said to have 
offered a thousand pounds for the liberty of cutting out 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 349 

one of the heads from this picture, lie conditioning to 
have a perfect facsimile painted in. The room has many 
other pictures of distinguished members of the company 
in long-past times, and of some of the monarchs and 
statesmen of England, all darkened with age, but dark- 
ened into such ripe magnificence as only age could be- 
stow. It is not my design to inflict any more specimens 
of ancient hall-painting on the reader; but it may be 
worth while to touch upon other modes of statcliness that 
still survive in these time-honored civic feasts, where 
there appears to be a singular assumption of dignity and 
solemn pomp by respectable c;tizens who would never 
dream of claiming any privilege of rank outside of their 
own sphere. Thus, I saw two caps of state for the 
warden and junior warden of the company, caps of silver 
(real coronets or crowns, indeed, for these city-grandees) 
wrought in open-work and lined with crimson velvet. In 
a strong-closet, opening from the hall, there was a great 
deal of rich plate to furnish forth the banquet-table, com- 
prising hundreds of forks and spoons, a vast silver punch- 
bowl, the gift of some jolly king or other, and, besides a 
multitude of less noticeable vessels, two loving -cups, 
very elaborately wrought in silver gilt, one presented by 
Henry VIII., the other by Charles II. These cups, 
including the covers and pedestals, are very large and 
weighty, although the bowl-part would hardly contain 
more than half a pint of wine, which, when the custom 
was first established, each guest was probably expected 
to. drink off at a draught. In passing them from hand to 
hand adown a long table of compotators, there is a pe- 
culiar ceremony which I may hereafter have occasion to 
describe. Meanwhile, if I might assume such a liberty, 
I should be glad to invite the reader to the official dinner- 
table of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large English sea- 
port where I spent several years. 



350 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

The Mayor's dinner-parties occur as often as once a 
fortnight, and, inviting his guests by fifty or sixty at a 
time, his Worship probably assembles at his board most 
of the eminent citizens and distinguished personages of 
the town and neighborhood more than once during his 
year's incumbency, and very much, no doubt, to the pro- 
motion of good feeling among individuals of opposite 
parties and diverse pursuits in life. A miscellaneous 
party of Englishmen can always find more comfortable 
ground to meet upon than as many Americans, their dif- 
ferences of opinion being incomparably less radical than 
ours, and it being the sincerest wish of all their hearts, 
whether they call themselves Liberals or what not, that 
nothing in this world shall ever be greatly altered from 
what it has been and is. Thus there is seldom sucli a 
virulence of political hostility that it may not be dis- 
solved in a glass or two of wine, without making the 
good liquor any more dry or bitter than accords witU 
English taste. 

The first dinner of this kind at which I had the honor 
to be present took place during assize-time, and included 
among the guests the judges and the prominent members 
of the bar. Beaching the Town Hall at seven o'clock, I 
communicated my name to one of several splendidly 
dressed footmen, and he repeated it to another on the 
first staircase, by whom it was passed to a third, and 
thence to a fourth at the door of the reception-room, los- 
ing all resemblance to the original sound in the course 
of these transmissions ; so that I had the advantage of 
making my entrance in the character of a stranger, not 
only to the whole company, but to myself as well. His 
Worship, however, kindly recognized me, and put me on 
speaking-terms with two or three gentlemen, whom I 
found very affable, and all the more hospitably attentive 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 351 

on the score of my nationality. It is very singular how 
kind an Englishman will almost invariably be to an in- 
dividual American, without ever bating a jot of his preju- 
dice against the American character in the lump. My 
new acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my 
ease ; and, in requital of their good-nature, I soon began 
to look round at the general company in a critical spirit, 
making my crude observations apart, and drawing silent 
inferences, of the correctness of which I should not have 
been half so well satisfied a year afterwards as at that 
moment. 

There were two judges present, a good many lawyers, 
and a few officers of the army in uniform. The other 
guests seemed to be principally of the mercantile class, 
and among them was a ship-owner from Nova Scotia, 
with whom I coalesced a little, inasmuch as we were 
born with the same sky over our heads, and an unbroken 
continuity of soil between his abode and mine. There 
was one old gentleman, whose character I never made 
out, with powdered hair, clad in black breeches and silk 
stockings, and wearing a rapier at his side ; ot herwise, 
with the exception of the military uniforms, there was 
little or no pretence of official costume. It being the 
first considerable assemblage of Englishmen that I had 
seen, my honest impression about them was, that they 
were a heavy and homely set of people, with a remark- 
able roughness of aspect and behavior, not repulsive, but 
beneath which it required more familiarity with the na- 
tional character than I then possessed always to detect 
the good breeding of a gentleman. Being generally mid- 
dle-aged, or still further advanced, they were by no means 
graceful in figure ; for the comeliness of the youthful 
Englishman rapidly diminishes with years, his body ap- 
pearing to grow longer, his legs to abbreviate themselves, 



352 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

and bis stomach to assume the dignified prominence which 
justly belongs to that metropolis of his system. His face 
(what with the acridity of the atmosphere, ale at lunch, 
wine at dinner, and a well-digested abundance of succu- 
lent food) gets red aud mottled, and develops at least one 
additional chin, with a promise of more ; so that, finally, 
a stranger recognizes his animal part at the most super- 
ficial glance, but must take time and a little pains to dis- 
cover the intellectual. Comparing him with an American, 
I really thought that our national paleness and lean habit 
of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an aesthetic 
point of view. It seemed to me, moreover, that the Eng- 
lish tailor had not done so much as he might and ought 
for these heavy figures, but had gone on wilfully exag- 
gerating their uncoutlmess by the roominess of their gar- 
ments; he had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and 
smartness was entirely out of his line. But, to be quite 
open with the reader, I afterwards learned to think that 
this aforesaid tailor has a deeper art than his brethren 
among ourselves, knowing how to dress his customers 
with such individual propriety that they look as if they 
were born in their clothes, the fit being to the character 
rat her i lian the form. If you make an Englishman smart 
(unless he be a very exceptional one, of whom I have 
seen a few), you make him a monster ; his best aspect is 
that of ponderous respectability. 

To make an end of these first impressions, I fancied 
that not merely the Suffolk bar, but the bar of any in- 
land county in New England, might show a set of thin- 
visaged men, looking wretchedly worn, sallow, deeply 
wrinkled across the forehead, and grimly furrowed about 
the mouth, with whom these heavy-cheeked English law- 
yers, slow-paced and fat-witted as they must needs be, 
would stand very little chance in a professional contest. 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 353 

How that matter might turn out, I am unqualified to 
decide. But I state these results of my earliest glimpses 
at Englishmen, not for what they are worth, but because 
I ultimately gave them up as worth little or nothing. 
In course of time, I came to the conclusion that English- 
men of all ages are a rather good-looking people, dress in 
admirable taste from their own point of view, and, under 
a surface never silken to the touch, have a refinement of 
manners too thorough and genuine to be thought of as 
a separate endowment, — that is to say, if the individual 
himself be a man of station, and has had gentlemen for 
his father and grandfather. The sturdy Anglo-Saxon 
nature does not refine itself short of the third generation. 
The tradesmen, too, and all other classes, have their own 
proprieties. The only value of my criticisms, therefore, 
lay in their exemplifying the proueness of a traveller to 
measure one people by the distinctive characteristics of 
another, — as English writers invariably measure us, and 
take upon themselves to be disgusted accordingly, instead 
of trying to find out some principle of beauty with which 
we may be in conformity. 

In due time we were summoned to the table, and went 
thither in no solemn procession, but with a good deal of 
jostling, thrusting behind, and scrambling for places when 
we readied our destination. The legal gentlemen, I sus- 
pect, were responsible for this indecorous zeal, which 
I never afterwards remarked in a similar party. The 
dining-hall was of noble size, and, like the other rooms 
of the suite, was gorgeously painted and gilded and brill- 
iantly illuminated. There was a splendid table-service, 
and a noble array of footmen, some of them in plain 
clothes, and others wearing the town-livery, richly deco- 
rated with gold-lace, and themselves excellent specimens 
of the blooming young manhood of Britain. When we 

w 



354 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

were fairly seated, it was certainly an agreeable spectacle 
to look up and down the long vista of earnest faces, and 
behold them so resolute, so conscious that there was an 
important business in hand, and so determined to be 
equal to the occasion. Indeed, Englishman or not, I 
hardly know what can be prettier than a snow-white 
table-cloth, a huge heap of flowers as a central decora- 
tion, bright silver, rich china, crystal glasses, decanters of 
Sherry at due intervals, a French roll and an artistically 
folded napkin at each plate, all that airy portion of a ban- 
quet, in short, that comes before the first mouthful, the 
whole illuminated by a blaze of artificial light, without 
which a dinner of made-dishes looks spectral, and the 
simplest viands are the best. Printed bills-of-fare were 
distributed, representing an abundant feast, no part of 
which appeared on the table until called for in separate 
plates. I have entirely forgotten what it was, but deem 
it no great matter, inasmuch as there is a pervading com- 
monplace and ideiiticalness in the composition of exten- 
sive dinners, on account of the impossibility of supplying 
a hundred guests with anything particularly delicate or 
rare. It was suggested to me that certain juicy old gen- 
tlemen had a private understanding what to call for, and 
that it would be good policy in a stranger to follow in 
their footsteps through the feast. I did not care to do so, 
however, because, like Sancho Panza's dip out of Cama- 
cho's caldron, any sort of potluck at such a table would 
be sure to suit my purpose ; so I chose a dish or two on 
my own judgment, and, getting through my labors be- 
times, had great pleasure in seeing the Englishmen toil 
onward to the end. 

They drank rather copiously, too, though wisely ; for I 
observed that they seldom took Hock, and let the Cham- 
pagne bubble slowly away out of the goblet, solacing 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 355 

themselves with Sherry, but tasting it warily before 
bestowing their final confidence. Their taste in wines, 
however, did not seem so exquisite, and certainly was 
not so various, as that to which many Americans pretend. 
This foppery of an intimate acquaintance with rare vint- 
ages does not suit a sensible Englishman, as he is very 
much in earnest about his wines, and adopts one or two 
as his lifelong friends, seldom exchanging them for any 
Delilahs of a moment, and reaping the reward of his con- 
stancy in an unimpaired stomach, and only so much gout 
as he deems wholesome and desirable. Knowing well 
the measure of his powers, he is not apt to fill his glass 
too often. Society, indeed, would hardly tolerate habit- 
ual imprudences of that kind, though, in my opinion, the 
Englishmen now upon the stage could carry off their 
three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of 
their forefathers. It is not so very long since the three- 
bottle heroes sank finally under the table. It may be (at 
least, I should be glad if it were true) that there was an 
occult sympathy between our temperance reform, now 
somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous dis- 
appearance of hard-drinking among the respectable classes 
in England. I remember a middle-aged gentleman tell- 
ing me (in illustration of the very slight importance 
attached to breaches of temperance within the memory 
of men not yet old) that he had seen a certain magis- 
trate, Sir John Linkwater, or Drinkwater, — but I think 
the jolly old knight could hardly have staggered under so 
perverse a misnomer as this last, — while sitting on the 
magisterial bench, pull out a crown-piece and hand it 
to the clerk. "Mr. Clerk," said Sir John, as if it were 
the most indifferent fact in the world, " I was drunk last 
night. There are my five shillings." 
• During the dinner, I had a good deal of pleasant con- 



356 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

versation with the gentlemen on either side of me. One 
of them, a lawyer, expatiated with great unction on the 
social standing of the judges. Representing the dignity 
and authority of the Crown, they take precedence, during 
assize-time, of the highest military men in the kingdom, 
of the Lord-Lieutenant of the county, of the Archbishops, 
of the royal Dukes, and even of the Prince of Wales. 
Tor the nonce, they are the greatest men in England. 
With a glow of professional complacency that amounted 
to enthusiasm, my friend assured me, that, in case of a 
royal dinner, a judge, if actually holding an assize, would 
be expected to oiler his arm and take the Queen herself 
to the table. Happening to be in company with some 
of these elevated personages, on subsequent occasions, it 
appeared to me that the judges are fully conscious of 
their paramount claims to respect, and take rather more 
pains to impress them on their ceremonial inferiors than 
men of high hereditary rank are apt to do. Bishops, if 
it be not irreverent to say so, are sometimes marked by a 
similar characteristic. Dignified position is so sweet to 
an Englishman, that he needs to be born in it, and to feel 
it thoroughly incorporated with his nature from its origi- 
nal germ, in order to keep him from flaunting it obtru- 
sively in the faces of innocent bystanders. 

My companion on the other side was a thick-set, mid- 
dle-aged man, uncouth in manners, and ugly where none 
were handsome, with a dark, roughly hewn visage, that 
looked grim in repose, and seemed to hold within itself 
the machinery of a very terrific frown. He ate with 
resolute appetite, and let slip few opportunities of imbib- 
ing whatever liquids happened to be passing by. I was 
meditating in what way this grisly featured table-fellow 
might most safely be accosted, when he turned to me 
with a surly sort of kindness, and invited me to take 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 357 

a glass of wine. We then began a conversation that 
abounded, on his part, with sturdy sense, and, somehow 
or other, brought me closer to him than I had yet stood 
to an Englishman. I should hardly have taken him lo 
be an educated man, certainly not a scholar of accurate 
training; and yet he seemed to have all the resources 
of education and trained intellectual power at command. 
My fresh Americanism, and watchful observation of Eng- 
lish characteristics, appeared either to interest or amuse 
him, or perhaps both. Under the mollifying influences 
of abundance of meat and drink, he grew very gracious 
(not that I ought to use such a phrase to describe his 
evidently genuine good-will), and by and by expressed a 
wish for further acquaintance, asking me to call at his 
rooms in London and inquire for Sergeant "VY ilk ins, — 
throwing out the name forcibly, as if he had no occasion 
to be ashamed of it. I remembered Dean Swift's retort 
to Sergeant Bettesworth on a similar announcement, — 
"Of what regiment, pray, sir?" — and fancied that the 
same question might not have been quite amiss, if applied 
to the rugged individual at my side. But I heard of him 
subsequently as one of the prominent men at the English 
bar, a rough customer, and a terribly strong champion 
in criminal cases ; and it caused me more regret than 
might have been expected, on so slight an acquaintance- 
ship, when, not long afterwards, I saw his death 
announced in the newspapers. Not rich in attractive 
qualities, he possessed, I think, the most attractive one 
of all, — thorough manhood. 

After the cloth was removed, a goodly group of decan- 
ters were set before the Mayor, who sent them forth on 
their outward voyage, full freighted with Port, Sherry, 
Madeira, and Claret, of which excellent liquors, me- 
thought, the latter found least acceptance among the 



358 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

guests. When every man had filled his glass, his Wor- 
ship stood up and proposed a toast. It was, of course, 
" Our gracious Sovereign," or words to that effect ; and 
immediately a band of musicians, whose preliminary 
tootings and thrummings I had already heard behind me, 
struck up "God save the Queen," and the wmole company 
rose with one impulse to assist in singing that famous na- 
tional anthem. It was the first time in my life that I had 
ever seen a body of men, or even a single man, under the 
active influence of the sentiment of Loyalty ; for, though 
we call ourselves loyal to our country and institutions, 
and prove it by our readiness to shed blood and sacrifice 
life in their behalf, still the principle is as cold and hard, 
in an American bosom, as the steel spring that puts in 
motion a powerful machinery. In the Englishman's sys- 
tem, a force similar to that of our steel spring is generated 
by the warm throbbings of human hearts. He clothes 
our bare abstraction in flesh and* blood, — at present, in 
the flesh and blood of a woman, — and manages to com- 
bine love, awe, and intellectual reverence, all in one emo- 
tion, and to embody his mother, his wife, his children, 
the whole idea of kindred, in a single person, and make 
her the representative of his country and its laws. We 
Americans smile superior, as I did at the Mayor's table ; 
and yet, I fancy, we lose some very agreeable titillations 
of the heart in consequence of our proud prerogative of 
caring no more about our President than for a man of 
straw, or a stuffed scarecrow straddling in a cornfield. 

But, to say the truth, the spectacle struck me rather 
ludicrously, to see this party of stout middle-aged and 
elderly gentlemen, in the fulness of meat and drink, their 
ample and ruddy faces glistening with wine, perspiration, 
and enthusiasm, rumbling out those strange old stanzas 
from the very bottom of their hearts and stomachs, which 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 359 

two organs, in the English interior arrangement, lie closer 
together than in ours. The song seemed to me the rud- 
est old ditty in the world ; but I could not wonder at its 
universal acceptance and indestructible popularity, con- 
sidering how inimitably it expresses the national faith 
and feeling as regards the inevitable righteousness of 
England, the Almighty's consequent respect and partial- 
ity for that redoubtable little island, and his presumed 
readiness to strengthen its defence against the contuma- 
cious wickedness and knavery of all other principalities or 
republics. Tennyson himself, though evidently English. 
to the very last prejudice, could not write half so good a 
song for the purpose. Finding that the entire dinner- 
table struck in, with voices of every pitch between rolling 
thunder and the squeak of a cart-wheel, and that the 
strain was not of such delicacy as to be much hurt by the 
harshest of them, I determined to lend my own assistance 
in swelling the triumphant roar. It seemed but a proper 
courtesy to the first Lady in the land, whose guest, in the 
largest sense, T might consider myself. Accordingly, my 
first tuneful efforts (and probably my last, for 1 purpose 
not to sing any more, unless it be "Hail Columbia" on 
the restoration of the Union) were poured freely forth in 
honor of Queen Victoria. The Sergeant smiled like the 
carved head of a Swiss nutcracker, and the other gen- 
tlemen in my neighborhood, by nods and gestures, evinced 
grave approbation of so suitable a tribute to English su- 
periority ; and we finished our stave and sat down in an 
extremely happy frame of mind. 

Other toasts followed in honor of the great institutions 
and interests of the country, and speeches in response to 
each were made by individuals whom the Mayor desig- 
nated or the company called for. None of them im- 
pressed me with a very high idea of English postprandial 



360 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

oratory. It is inconceivable, indeed, what ragged and 
shapeless utterances most Englishmen are satisfied to 
give vent to, without attempting anything like artistic 
shape, but clapping on a patch here and another there, 
and ultimately getting out what they want to say, and 
generally with a result of sufficiently good sense, but in 
some such disorganized mass as if they had thrown it up 
rather than spoken it. It seemed to me that this Mas 
almost as much by choice as necessity. An Englishman, 
ambit ious of public favor, should uot be too smooth. If an 
orator is glib, his countrymen distrust him. They dislike 
smartness. The stronger and heavier his thoughts, the 
better, provided there be an element of commonplace 
running through them ; and any rough, yet never vulgar 
force of expression, such as would knock an oppoueut 
down, if it hit him, only it must not be too personal, is 
altogether to their taste; but a studied neatness of lan- 
guage, or other such superficial graces, they cannot abide. 
They do not often permit a man to make himself a hue 
orator of malice aforethought, that is, unless he be a no- 
bleman (as, for example, Lord Stanley, of the Derby 
family), who, as an hereditary legislator and necessarily 
a public speaker, is bound to remedy a poor natural de- 
livery in the best way he can. On the whole, I partly 
agree with them, and, if I cared for any oratory what- 
ever, should be as likely to applaud theirs as our own. 
When an English speaker sits down, you feel that you 
have been listening to a real man, and not to an actor ; 
his sentiments have a wholesome earth-smell in them, 
though, very likely, this apparent naturalness is as much 
an art as what we expend in rounding a sentence or elab- 
orating a peroration. 

It is one good effect of this inartificial style, that no- 
body in England seems to feel any shyness about shovel- 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 361 

ling the untrimmed and untrimmable ideas out of his 
mind for the benefit of an audience. At least, nobody 
did on the occasion now in hand, except a poor little 
Major of Artillery, who responded for the Army in a 
thin, quavering voice, with a terribly hesitating trickle of 
fragmentary ideas, and, I question not, would rather have 
been bayoneted in front of his batteries than to have said 
a word. Not his own mouth, but the cannon's, was this 
poor Major's proper organ of utterance. 

While I was thus amiably occupied in criticising my 
fellow-guests, the Mayor had got up to propose another 
toast; and listening rather inattentively to the first sen- 
tence or two, I soon became sensible of a drift in his 
Worship's remarks that made me glance apprehensively 
towards Sergeant Wilkins. "Yes," grumbled that gruff 
personage, shoving a decanter of Port towards me, " it is 
your turn next " ; and seeing in my face, I suppose, the 
consternation of a wholly unpractised orator, he kindly 
added, "It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment will 
answer the purpose. The less you say, the better they 
will like it." That being the case, I suggested that per- 
haps they would like it best if I said nothing at all. But 
the Sergeant shook his head. Now, on first receiving 
the Mayor's invitation to dinner, it had occurred to me 
that I might possibly be brought into my present predica- 
ment ; but I had dismissed the idea from my mind as too 
disagreeable to be entertained, and, moreover, as so alien 
from my disposition and character that Fate surely could 
not keep such a misfortune in store for me. If nothing 
else prevented, an earthquake or the crack of doom would 
certainly interfere before I need rise to speak. Yet here 
was the Mayor getting on inexorably, — and, indeed, I 
heartily wished that he might get on and on forever, and 
of his wordy wanderings find no end. 
16 



362 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest con- 
fidant, deigns to desire it, I can impart to him my own 
experience as a public speaker quite as indifferently as 
if it concerned another person. Indeed, it does concern 
another, or a mere spectral phenomenon, for it was not 
I, in my proper and natural self, that sat there at table 
or subsequently rose to speak. At the moment, then, if 
the choice had been offered me whether (he Mayor should 
let off a speech at my head or a pistol, I should unhesi- 
tatingly have taken the latter alternative. I had really 
nothing to say, not an idea in my head, nor, which was a 
great deal worse, any flowing words or embroidered sen- 
tences in which to dress out that empty Nothing, and 
give it a cunning aspect of intelligence, such as might last 
the poor vacuity the little time it had to live. But time 
pressed; the Mayor brought his remarks, affectionately 
eulogistic of the United States and highly complimentary 
to their distinguished representative at that table, to a 
close, amid a vast deal of cheering; and the band struck 
up "Hail Columbia," I believe, though it might have 
been "Old Hundred," or "God save the Queen" over 
again, for anything that I should have known or cared. 
When the music ceased, there was an intensely disagree- 
able instant, during which I seemed to rend away and 
fling off the habit of a lifetime, and rose, still void of 
ideas, but with preternatural composure, to make a speech. 
The guests rattled on the table, and cried, " Hear ! " most 
vociferously, as if now, at length, in this foolish and idly 
garrulous world, had come the long-expected moment 
w]ien one golden word was to be spoken; and in that 
imminent crisis, I caught a glimpse of a little bit of an 
effusion of international sentiment, which it might, and 
must, and should do to utter. 

Well; it was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. What 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 363 

surprised me most was the sound of my own voice, which 
I had never before hoard at a declamatory pitch, and 
which impressed me as belonging to some other person, 
who, and not myself, would be responsible for the speech : 
a prodigious consolation and encouragement under the 
circumstances ! I went on without the slightest embar- 
rassment, and sat down amid great applause, wholly un- 
deserved by anything that I had spoken, but well won 
from Englishmen, met bought, by the new development 
of pluck that alone had enabled me to speak at all. " It 
was handsomely done ! " quoth Sergeant Wilkins ; and 
I felt like a recruit who had been for the "first time under 
fire. 

I would gladly have ended my oratorical career then 
and there forever, but was often placed in a similar or 
worse position, and compelled to meet it as I best might ; 
for this was one of the necessities of an office which I had 
voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and beneath which 
I might be crushed by no moral delinquency on my own 
part, but could not shirk without cowardice and shame. 
My subsequent fortune was various. Once, though I 
felt it to be a kind of imposture, I got a speech by heart, 
and doubtless it might have been a very pretty one, only 
I forgot every syllable at the moment of need, and had 
to improvise another as well as I could. I found it a 
better method to prearrange a few points in my mind, 
and trust to the spur of the occasion, and the kind aid 
of Providence, for enabling me to bring them to bear. 
The presence of any considerable proportion of personal 
friends generally dumbfounded me. I would rather have 
talked with an enemy in the gate. Invariably, too, I was 
much embarrassed by a small audience, and succeeded 
better with a large one, — the sympathy of a multitude 
possessing a buoyant effect, which lifts the speaker a 



364< CIVIC BANQUETS. 

little way out of his individuality and tosses liim towards 
a perhaps better range of sentiment than his private one. 
Again, if I rose carelessly and confidently, with an ex- 
pectation of going through the business entirely at my 
ease, I often found that I had little or nothing to say ; 
whereas, if I came to the charge in perfect despair, and 
at a crisis when failure would have been horrible, it once 
or twice happened that the frightful emergency concen- 
trated my poor faculties, and enabled me to give definite 
and vigorous expression to sentiments which an instant 
before looked as vague and far off as the clouds in the 
atmosphere. On the whole, poor as my own success may 
have been, I apprehend that any intelligent man with a 
tongue possesses the chief requisite of oratorical power, 
and may develop many of the others, if he deems it worth 
while to bestow a great amount of labor and pains on an 
object which the most accomplished orators, I suspect, 
have not found altogether satisfactory to their highest 
impulses. At any rate, it must be a remarkably true 
man who can keep his own elevated conception of truth 
when the lower feeling of a multitude is assailing his nat- 
ural sympathies, and who can speak out frankly the best 
that there is in him, when by adulterating it a little, or 
a good deal, he knows that he may make it ten times as 
acceptable to the audience. 

This slight article on the civic banquets of England 
would be too wretchedly imperfect, without an attempted 
description of a Lord Mayor's dinner at the Mansion 
House in London. I should have preferred the annual 
feast at Guildhall, but never had the good fortune to wit- 
ness it. Once, however, I was honored with an invita- 
tion to one of the regular dinners, and gladly accepted it, 
— taking the precaution, nevertheless, though it hardly 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 385 

seemed necessary, to inform the City-King, through a 
mutual friend, that I was no fit representative of American 
eloquence, and must humbly make it a condition that I 
should not be expected to open my mouth, except for the 
reception of his Lordship's bountiful hospitality. The 
reply was gracious and acquiescent ; so that I presented 
myself in the great entrance-hall of the Mansion House, 
at half past six o' clock, in a state of most enjoyable free- 
dom from the pusillanimous apprehensions that often tor- 
mented me at such times. The Mansion House was built 
in Queen Anne's days, in the very heart of old London, 
and is a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really 
as great a man as his traditionary state and pomp would 
seem to indicate. Times are changed, however, since the 
days of Whittington, or even of Hogarth's Industrious 
Apprentice, to whom the highest imaginable reward of 
lifelong integrity was a seat in the Lord Mayor's chair. 
People nowadays say that the real dignity and importance 
have perished jut of the office, as they do, sooner or 
later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving only a painted 
and gilded shell like that of an Easter egg, and that it is 
only second-rate and third-rate men who now condescend 
to be ambitious of the Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved 
at this ; for the original emigrants of New England had 
strong sympathies with the people of London, who were 
mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians in poli- 
tics, in the early days of our country ; so that the Lord 
Mayor was a potentate of huge dimensions in the estima- 
tion of our forefathers, and held to be hardly second to 
the prime minister of the throne. The true great men of 
the city now appear to have aims beyond city greatness, 
connecting themselves with national politics, and seeking 
to be identified with the aristocracy of the country. 
In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of foot- 



366 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

men dressed in a livery of blue coats and buff breeches, 
in wliieli they looked wonderfully like American Revolu- 
tionary generals, only bedizened with far more lace and 
embroidery than those simple and grand old heroes ever 
dreamed of wearing. There were likewise two very im- 
posing figures, whom I should have taken to be military 
men of rank, being arrayed in scarlet coats and large sil- 
ver epaulets ; but they turned out to be officers of the 
Lord Mayor's household, and were now employed in 
assigning to the guests the places which they were respec- 
tively to occupy at the dinner-table. Our names (for I 
had included myself in a little group of friends) were 
announced; and ascending the staircase, we met his Lord- 
ship in the doorway of the first reception-room, where, 
also, we had the advantage of a presentation to the Lady 
Mayoress. As this distinguished couple retired into pri- 
vate life at the termination of their year of office, it is 
inadmissible to make any remarks, critical or laudatory, 
on the manners and bearing of two personages suddenly 
emerging from a position of respectable mediocrity into 
one of pre-eminent dignity within their own sphere. Such 
individuals almost always seem to grow nearly or quite to 
the full size of their office. If it were desirable to write 
an essay on the latent aptitude of ordinary people for 
grandeur, we have an exemplification in our own country, 
and on a scale incomparably greater than that of the 
Mayoralty, though invested with nothing like the out- 
ward magnificence that gilds and embroiders the latter. 
If I have been correctly informed, the Lord Mayor's sal- 
ary is exactly double that of the President of the United 
States, and yet is found very inadequate to his necessary 
expenditure. 

There were two reception-rooms, thrown into one by 
the opening of wide folding-doors ; and though in an old 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 367 

style, and not yet so old as to be venerable, they are re- 
markably handsome apartments, lofty as well as spacious, 
with carved ceilings and. walls, and at either end a splen- 
did fireplace of white marble, ornamented with sculp- 
tured wreaths of flowers and foliage. The company were 
about three hundred, many of them celebrities in politics, 
war, literature, and science, though I recollect none pre- 
eminently distinguished in cither department. But it is 
certainly a pleasant mode of doing honor to men of litera- 
ture, for example, who deserve well of the public, yet 
do not often meet it face to face, thus to bring them to- 
gether under genial auspices, in connection with persons 
of note in other lines. I know not what may be the 
Lord Mayor's mode or principle of selecting his guests, 
nor whether, during his official term, he can proffer his 
hospitality to every man of noticeable talent in the wide 
world of London, nor, in fine, whether his Lordship's 
invitation is much sought for or valued; but it seemed to 
me that this periodical feast is one of the many sagacious 
methods which the English have contrived for keeping 
up a good understanding among different sorts of people. 
Like most other distinctions of society, however, I pre- 
sume that the Lord Mayor's card does not often seek out 
modest merit, but comes at last when the recipient is 
conscious of the bore, and doubtful about the honor. 

One very pleasant characteristic, ' which I never met 
with at any other public or partially public dinner, was 
the presence of ladies. No doubt, they were principally 
the wives and daughters of city magnates ; and if we may 
judge from the many sly allusions in old plays and satiri- 
cal poems, the city of London has always been famous 
for the beauty of its women and the reciprocal attractions 
between them and the men of quality. Be that as it 
might, while straying hither and thither through those 



368 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

crowded apartments, I saw much reason for modifying 
certain heterodox opinions which I had imbibed, in my 
Transatlantic newness and rawness, as regarded the deli- 
cate character and frequent occurrence of English beauty. 
To state the entire truth (being, at this period, some 
years old in English life), my taste, I fear, had long since 
begun to be deteriorated by acquaintance with other 
models of feminine loveliness than it was my happiness 
to know in America. I often found, or seemed to find, 
if I may dare to confess it, in the persons of such of my 
dear countrywomen as I now occasionally met, a certain 
meagrcness, (Heaven forbid that I should call it scrawni- 
ness !) a deficiency of physical development, a scantiuess, 
so to speak, in the pattern of their material make, a pale- 
ness of complexion, a thinness of voice, — all of which 
characteristics, nevertheless, only made me resolve so 
much the more sturdily to uphold these fair creatures as 
angels, because I was sometimes driven to a half-acknowl- 
edgment, that the English ladies, looked at from a lower 
point of view, were perhaps a little finer animals than 
they. The advantages of the latter, if any they could 
really be said to have, were all comprised in a few addi- 
tional lumps of clay on their shoulders and other parts 
of their figures. It would be a pitiful bargain to give up 
the ethereal charm of American beauty in exchange for 
half a hundred- weight of human clay ! 

At a given signal we all found our way into an inu 
mense room, called the Egyptian Hall, I know not why, 
except that the architecture was classic, and as different 
as possible from the ponderous style of Memphis and the 
Pyramids. A powerful band played inspiringly as we 
entered, and a brilliant profusion of light shone down on 
two long tables, extending the whole length of the hall, 
and a cross-table between them, occupying nearly its 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 369 

entire breadth. Glass gleamed and silver glistened on an 
acre or two of snowy damask, over which were set out 
all the accompaniments of a stately feast, We found out- 
places without much difficulty, and the Lord Mayor's 
chaplain implored a blessing on the food, — a ceremony 
which the English never omit, at a great dinner or a 
small one, yet consider, I fear, not so much a religious 
rite as a sort of preliminary relish before the soup. 

The soup, of course, on this occasion, was turtle, of 
which, in accordance with immemorial custom, each guest, 
was allowed two platcfuls, in spite of the otherwise im- 
mitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed, judging from 
the proceedings of the gentlemen near me, I surmised 
that there was no practical limit, except the appetite of 
the guests and the capacity of the soup-tureens. Not 
being fond of this civic dainty, I partook of it but once, 
and then only in accordance with the wise maxim, al- 
ways to taste a fruit, a wine, or a celebrated dish, at its 
indigenous site; and the very fountain-head of turtle- 
soup, I suppose, is in the Lord Mayor's dinner-pot. It 
is one of those orthodox customs which people follow for 
half a century without knowing why, to drink a sip of 
rum-punch, in a very small tumbler, after the soup. It 
was excellently well-brewed, and it seemed to me almost 
worth while to sup the soup for the sake of sipping the 
punch. The rest of the dinner was catalogued in a bill-of- 
fare printed on delicate white paper within an arabesque 
border of green and gold. It looked very good, not 
only in the English and Erench names of the numerous 
dishes, but also in the positive reality of the dishes them- 
selves, which were all set on the table to be carved and 
distributed by the guests. This ancient and honest method 
is attended with a good deal of trouble, and a lavish effu- 
sion of gravy, yet by no means bestowed or dispensed in 
16* x 



370 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

vain, because you have thereby the absolute assurance of 
a banqmt actually before your eyes, instead of a shadowy 
promise in the brll-of-fare, and such meagre fulfilment as 
a single guest can contrive to get upon his individual 
plate. I wonder that Englishmen, who are fond of look- 
ing at prize-oxen in the shape of butcher's-meat, do not 
generally better estimate the aesthetic gormandism of de- 
vouring the whole dinner with their eyesight, before pro- 
ceeding to nibble the comparatively few morsels which, 
after all, the most heroic appetite and widest stomachic 
capacity of mere mortals can enable even an alderman 
really to eat. There fell to my lot three delectable things 
enough, which I take pains to remember, that the reader 
may not go away wholly unsatisfied from the Barmecide 
feast to which I have bidden him, — a red mullet, a plate 
of mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and part of a ptarmi- 
gan, a bird of the same family as the grouse, but feeding 
high up towards the summit of the Scotch mountains, 
whence it gets a wild delicacy of flavor very superior to 
that of the artificially nurtured English game-fowl. All 
the other dainties have vanished from my memory as 
completely as those of Prospero's banquet after Ariel had 
clapped his wings over it. The band played at intervals 
inspiriting us to new efforts, as did likewise the sparkling 
wines which the footmen supplied from an inexhaustible 
cellar, and which the guests quaffed witli little apparent, 
reference to the disagreeable fact that there comes a to- 
morrow morning after every feast. As long as that shall 
be the case, a prudeut man can never have full enjoyment 
of his dinner. 

Nearly opposite to me, on the other side of the table, 
sat a young lady in white, whom I am sorely tempted to 
describe, but dare not, because not only the superemi- 
nence of her beauty, but its peculiar character, would 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 371 

cause the sketch to be recognized, however rudely it 
might be drawn. I hardly thought that there existed 
such a woman outside of a picture-frame, or the covers 
of a romance : not that I had ever met with her resem- 
blance even there, but, being so distinct and singular an 
apparition, she seemed likelier to find her sisterhood in 
poetry and picture than in real life. Let us turn away 
from her, lest a touch too apt should compel her stately 
and cold and soft and womanly grace to gleam out upon 
my page with a strange repulsion and unattainableness in 
the very spell that made her beautiful. At her side, and 
familiarly attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I 
remember only a hard outline of the nose and forehead, 
and such a monstrous portent of a beard that you could 
discover no symptom of a mouth, except when he opened 
it to speak, or to put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, 
you suddenly became aware of a cave hidden behind the 
impervious and darksome shrubbery. There could be no 
doubt who this gentleman and lady were. Any child 
would have recognized them at a glance. It was Blue- 
beard and a new wife (the loveliest of the series, but with 
already a mysterious gloom overshadowing her fair young 
brow) travelling in their honeymoon, and dining, among 
other distinguished strangers, at the Lord Mayor's table. 
After an hour or two of valiant achievement with knife 
and fork came the dessert ; and at the point of the festi- 
val where finger-glasses are usually introduced, a large 
silver basin was carried round to the guests, containing 
rose-water, into which we dipped the ends of our napkins 
and were conscious of a delightful fragrance, instead of 
that heavy and weary odor, the hateful ghost of a defunct 
dinner. This seems to be an ancient custom of the city, 
not confined to the Lord Mayor's table, but never met 
with westward of Temple Car. 



372 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

During all the feast, in accordance with another ancient 
custom, the origin or purport of which I do nut remember 
to have heard, there stood a man in armor, with a helmet on 
his head, behind his Lordship's chair. When the after-din- 
ner wine was placed on the table, still another official per- 
sonage appeared behind the chair, and proceeded to make 
a solemn and sonorous proclamation (in which he enu- 
merated the principal guests, comprising three or four 
noblemen, several baronets, and plenty of generals, mem- 
bers of Parliament, aldermen, and other names of the il- 
lustrious, one of which sounded strangely familiar to my 
ears), ending in some such style as this : " and other gen- 
tlemen and ladies, here present, the Lord Mayor drinks 
to you all in a loving-cup," — giving a sort of sentimental 
twang to the two words, — "and sends it round among 
you ! " And forthwith the loving-cup — several of them, 
indeed, on each side of the tables — came slowly down 
with all the antique ceremony. 

The fashion of it is thus. The Lord Mayor, standing 
up and taking the covered cup in both hands, presents it 
to the guest at his elbow, who likewise rises, and removes 
the cover for his Lordship to drink, which being success- 
fully accomplished, the guest replaces the cover and re- 
ceives the cup into his own hands. He then presents it 
to his next neighbor, that the cover may be again removed 
for himself to take a draught, after which the third per- 
son goes through a similar manceuvre with a fourth, and 
he with a fifth, until the whole company find themselves 
inextricably intertwisted and entangled in one complicated 
chain of love. When the cup came to my hands, I ex- 
amined it critically, both inside and out, and perceived 
it to be an antique and richly ornamented silver goblet, 
capable of holding about a quart of wine. Considering 
how much trouble we all expended in getting the cup to 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 373 

our lips, the guests appeared to content themselves with 
wonderfully moderate potations. In truth, nearly or quite 
the original quart of wine being still in the goblet, it 
seemed doubtful whether any of the company had more 
than barely touched the silver rim before passing it to 
their neighbors, — a degree of abstinence that might be 
accounted for by a fastidious repugnance to so many com- 
potators in one cup, or possibly by a disapprobation of the 
liquor. Beiug curious to know all about these important 
matters, with a view of recommending to my countrymen 
whatever they might usefully adopt, I drank an honest 
sip from the loving-cup, and had no occasion for another, 
— ascertaining it to be Claret of a poor original quality, 
largely mingled with water, and spiced and sweetened. 
It was good enough, however, for a merely spectral or 
ceremonial drink, and could never have been intended for 
any better purpose. 

The toasts now began in the customary order, attended 
with speeches neither more nor less witty and ingenious 
than the specimens of table-eloquence which had hereto- 
fore delighted me. As preparatory to each new display, 
the herald, or whatever he was, behind the chair of state, 
gave awful notice that the Right Honorable the Lord 
Mayor was about to propose a toast. His Lordship 
being happily delivered thereof, together with some ac- 
companying remarks, the band played an appropriate 
tune, and the herald again issued proclamation to the 
effect that such or such a nobleman, or gentleman, gen- 
eral, dignified clergyman, or what not, was going to 
respond to the Right Honorable the Lord Mayor's toast; 
then, if I mistake not, there was another prodigious 
flourish of trumpets and twanging of stringed instru- 
ments; and finally the doomed individual, waiting all 
this while to be decapitated, got up and proceeded to 



374 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

make a fool of himself. A bashful young earl tried his 
maideu oratory on the good citizens of London, and 
having evidently got every word by heart (even includ- 
ing, however he managed it, the most seemingly casual 
improvisations of the moment), he really spoke like a 
book, and made incomparably the smoothest speech I 
ever heard in England. 

The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only on 
this occasion, but all similar ones, was what impressed me 
as most extraordinary, not to say absurd. Why should 
people eat a good dinner, and put their spirits into festive 
trim with Champagne, and afterwards mellow themselves 
into a most enjoyable state of quietude with copious liba- 
tions of Sherry and old Port, and then disturb the whole 
excellent result by listening to speeches as heavy as an 
after-dinner nap, and in no degree so refreshing? If the 
Champagne had thrown its sparkle over the surface of 
these effusions, or if the generous Port had shone through 
their substance with a ruddy glow of the old English 
humor, I might have seen a reason for honest gentlemen 
prattling in their cups, and should undoubtedly have been 
glad to be a listener. But there was no attempt nor im- 
pulse of the kind on the part of the orators, nor apparent 
expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the audi- 
ence. In fact, I imagine that the latter were best pleased 
when the speaker embodied his ideas in the figurative 
language of arithmetic, or struck upon any hard matter 
of business or statistics, as a heavy-laden bark bumps 
upon a rock in mid-ocean. The sad severity, the too 
earnest utilitarianism, of modern life, have wrought a 
radical and lamentable change, I am afraid, in this ancient 
and goodly institution of civic banquets. People used to 
come to them, a few hundred years ago, for the sake of 
being jolly ; they come now with an odd notion of pour- 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 375 

ing sober wisdom into their wine by way of wormwood- 
bitters, and thus make such a mess of it that the wine 
and wisdom reciprocally spoil one another. 

Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have taken a spice 
of acridity from a circumstance that happened about this 
stage of the feast, and very much interrupted my own 
further enjoyment of it. Up to this time, my condition 
had been exceedingly felicitous, both on account of the 
brilliancy of the scene, and because I was in close prox- 
imity with three very pleasant English friends. One of 
them was a lady, whose honored name my readers would 
recognize as a household word, if I dared write it ; an- 
other, a gentleman, likewise well known to them, whose 
fine taste, kind heart, and genial cultivation are qualities 
seldom mixed in such happy proportion as in him. The 
third was the man to whom I owed most in England, the 
warm benignity of whose nature was never weary of 
doing me good, who led me to many scenes of life, in 
town, camp, and country, which I never could have found 
out for myself, who knew precisely the kind of help a 
stranger needs, and gave it as freely as if he had not had 
a thousand more important tilings to live for. Tims I 
never felt safer or cosier at anybody's fireside, even my 
own, than at the dinner-table of the Lord Mayor. 

Out of this serene sky came a thunderbolt. His Lord- 
ship got up and proceeded to make some very eulogistic 
remarks upon "the literary and commercial" — I ques- 
tion whether those two adjectives were ever before mar- 
ried by a copulative conjunction, and they certainly would 
not live together in illicit intercourse, of their own accord 
— " the literary and commercial attainments of an emi- 
nent gentleman there present," and then went on to 
speak of the relations of blood and interest between 
Great Britain and the aforesaid eminent gentleman's 



376 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

native country. Those bonds were more intimate than 
had ever before existed between two great nations, 
throughout all history, and his Lordship felt assured 
that that whole honorable company would join him in 
the expression of a fervent wish that they might be held 
inviolably sacred, on both sides of the Atlantic, now and 
forever. Then came the same wearisome old toast, dry 
and hard to chew upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had 
been the text of nearly all the oratory of my public 
career. The herald sonorously announced that Mr. So- 
and-so would now respond to his Eight Honorable Lord- 
ship's toast and speech, the trumpets sounded the cus- 
tomary nourish for the onset, there was a thunderous 
ramble of anticipatory applause, and finally a deep silence 
sank upon the festive hall. 

All this was a horrid piece of treachery on the Lord 
Mayor's part, after beguiling me within his hues on a 
pledge of safe-couduct ; and it seemed very strange that 
he could not let an unobtrusive individual eat his dinner 
in peace, drink a small sample of the Mansion House 
wine, and go away grateful at heart for the old English 
hospitality. If his Lordship had sent me an infusion of 
ratsbane in the loving-cup, I should have taken it much 
more kindly at his hands. But I suppose the secret of 
the matter to have been somewhat as follows. 

All England, just then, was in one of those singular 
fits of panic excitement (not fear, though as sensitive 
and tremulous as that emotion), which, in consequence 
of the homogeneous character of the people, their intense 
patriotism, and their dependence for their ideas in public 
affairs on other sources than their own examination and 
individual thought, are more sudden, pervasive, and un- 
reasoning than any similar mood of our own public. In 
truth, I have never seen the American public in a state 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 377 

at all similar, and believe that we arc incapable of it. 
Our excitements are not impulsive, like theirs, but, right 
or wrong, are moral and intellectual. Tor example, the 
grand rising of the North, at the commencement of this 
war, bore the aspect of impulse and passion only because 
it was so universal, and necessarily done in a moment, 
just as the quiet and simultaneous getting-up of a thou- 
sand people out of their chairs would cause a tumult that 
might be mistaken for a storm. We were cool then, and 
have been cool ever since, and shall remain cool to the 
end, which we shall take coolly, whatever it may be. 
There is nothing which the English find it so difficult to 
understand in us as this characteristic. They imagine 
us, in our collective capacity, a kind of wild beast, whose 
normal condition is savage fury, and are always looking 
for the moment when we shall break through the slender 
barriers of international law and comity, and compel the 
reasonable part of the world, with themselves at the 
head, to combine for the purpose of putting us into a 
stronger cage. At times this apprehension becomes so 
powerful (and when one man feels it, a million do), that 
it resembles the passage of the wind over a broad field of 
grain, where you see the whole crop bending and sway- 
ing beneath one impulse, and each separate stalk tossing 
with the selfsame disturbance as its myriad companions. 
At such periods all Englishmen talk with a terrible iden- 
tity of sentiment and expression. You have the whole 
country in each man ; and not one of them all, if you 
put him strictly to the question, can give a reasonable 
ground for his alarm. There are but two nations in the 
world — our own country and France — that can put 
England into this singular state. It is the united sensi- 
tiveness of a people extremely well-to-do, careful of their 
country's honor, most anxious for the preservation of the 



378 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

cumbrous and moss-grown prosperity which they have 
been so long in consolidating, and incompetent (owing 
to the national half-sightedness, and their habit of trust- 
ing to a few leading minds for their public opinion) to 
judge when that prosperity is really threatened. 

If the English were accustomed to look at the foreign 
side of any international dispute, they might easily have 
satisfied themselves that there was very little danger of a 
war at that particular crisis, from the simple circum- 
stance that their own Government had positively not an 
inch of honest ground to stand upon, and could not fail 
to be aware of the fact. Neither could they have met 
Parliament with any show of a justification for incurring 
war. It was no such perilous juncture as exists now, 
when law and right are really controverted on sustaina- 
ble or plausible grounds, and a naval commander may at 
any moment fire off the first cannon of a terrible contest. 
If I remember it correctly, it was a mere diplomatic 
sfjuabble, in which the British ministers, with the politic 
generosity which they are in the habit of showing towards 
their official subordinates, had tried to browbeat us for 
the purpose of sustaining an ambassador in an indefensi- 
ble proceeding ; and the American Government (for God 
had not denied us an administration of statesmen then) 
had retaliated with standi courage and exquisite skill, 
putting inevitably a cruel mortification upon their oppo- 
nents, but indulging them with no pretence whatever for 
active resentment. 

Now the Lord Mayor, like any other Englishman, 
probably fancied that War was on the western gale, and 
was glad to lay hold of even so insignificant an American 
as myself, who might be made to harp on the rusty old 
strings of national sympathies, identity of blood and 
interest, and community of language and literature, and 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 379 

whisper peace where there was no peace, in however 
weak an utterance. And possibly his Lordship thought, 
in his wisdom, that the good feeling which was sure to 
be expressed by a company of well-bred Englishmen, at 
his august and far-famed dinner-table, might have an ap- 
preciable influence on the grand result. Thus, when the 
Lord Mayor invited me to his feast, it was a piece of 
strategy. He wanted to induce me to fling myself, like 
a lesser Curtius, with a larger object of self-sacrifice, into 
the chasm of discord between England and America, and, 
on my ignominious demur, had resolved to shove me in 
with his own right-honorable hands, in the hope of 
closing up the horrible pit forever. On the whole, I for- 
give his Lordship. He meant well by all parties, — him- 
self, who would share the glory, and me, who ought to 
have desired nothing better than such an heroic oppor- 
tunity, — his own country, which would continue to get 
cotton and breadstuffs, and mine, which would get every- 
thing that men work with and wear. 

As soon as the Lord Mayor began to speak, I rapped 
upon my mind, and it gave forth a hollow sound, being 
absolutely empty of appropriate ideas. I never thought 
of listening to the speech, because I knew it all before- 
hand in twenty repetitions from other lips, and was 
aware that it would not offer a single suggestive point. 
In this dilemma, I turned to one of my three friends, a 
gentleman whom I knew to possess an enviable flow of 
silver speech, and obtested him, by whatever he deemed 
holiest, to give me at least an available thought or two to 
start with, and, once afloat, I would trust to my guardian- 
angel for enabling me to flounder ashore again. He ad- 
vised me to begin with some remarks complimentary to 
the Lord Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary rever- 
ence in which his office was held, — at least, my friend 



380 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

thought that there would be no harm in giving his Lord- 
ship this little sugar-plum, whether quite the fact or no, 
— was held by the descendants of the Puritan fore- 
fathers. Thence, if I liked, getting flexible with the oil 
of my own eloquence, I might easily slide otF into the 
momentous subject of the relations between England and 
America, to which his Lordship had made such weighty 
allusion. 

Seizing this handful of straw with a deatli-grip, and 
bidding my three friends bury me honorably, I got upon 
my legs to save both countries, or perish in the attempt. 
The tables roared and thundered at me, and suddenly 
were silent again. But, as I have never happened to 
stand in a position of greater dignity and peril, I deem it 
a stratagem of sage policy here to close these Sketches, 
leaving myself still erect in so heroic an attitude. 




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